Dead Harvest

21

As we approached the edge of the park, headlights shone through the trees — beacons of hope sweeping past us in the darkness. It was late, and the traffic was slight, but I was confident we'd find what we needed. But the slog through the park took longer than I'd expected, and the kid was fading fast. I only hoped it wasn't too late to make a difference.

With Anders' bloody, wheezing frame cradled tight to my chest, I broke from the cover of the trees, staggering out into the street. Behind me, Kate screamed, but I paid her no mind. The screech of tires pierced the night, and the air hung thick with burnt rubber. It drifted blue-black across the roadway, stinging my eyes. I blinked back tears, and squinted against the sudden glare of headlights.

Looked like I found my mark.

It was a Volvo station wagon, blue as sky beneath the streetlights, and it rocked to an awkward, diagonal halt just inches from where I stood. The driver, a woman in her fifties, was fumbling with a cell phone, her eyes wide with fright. I hoisted Anders over my shoulder, Flynn's well-muscled frame protesting under the strain, and broke for the driver's side door, yanking it open with my free hand and clawing for her phone. She was too stunned to resist. I snatched the phone from her hand, and tossed it in a lazy arc toward the woods. Her eyes flitted back and forth between the patch of woods in which it landed and me — filthy and bloodied in an undershirt and navy trousers, my only hope of passing as a cop in her eyes the uniform shirt currently pressed tight to Anders' wound — her face twisted into a rictus of terror.

"T-t-take the car," she said.

"I don't want the car," I said.

"I… I have money." She twisted in her seat, fumbling around in the back for her purse. I grabbed her wrist, and she turned, her gaze meeting mine.

"I don't want your money, either. This boy — he's hurt. What I need is a ride."

"I don't," she stammered, "I mean, I can't — "

"Do you know where the nearest hospital is?"

She hesitated, but only for a moment. "Yes."

"Then you can."

She stared at me a moment, her face a silent plea.

"If you don't do this, he'll die."

That did the trick. She clicked the rear doors unlocked. "Get in," she said.

I dropped Anders in the back, and gestured Kate in there as well. I climbed into the passenger seat, fetching Anders' blood-streaked knife from my pocket and laying it at ready across my lap. Our Good Samaritan didn't fail to notice. The blood drained from her face, and she gripped the steering wheel hard damn near enough to break it off, her knuckles bone-white.

"You did this to him?"

I didn't hesitate. "Yes," I said.

"You're a monster," she replied, not just a little bit of steel in her voice. "A goddamned monster."

"Lady, you have no idea how true that is. And if you don't start driving, I swear you're gonna get the same."

Again her tires squealed. This time, the car lurched forward.

"Easy!" Kate called from the back. "He's seeping through his bandages. I'm doing my best to stanch the flow, but if you rattle around too much, I won't be able to keep the pressure on."

"She slows down, it doesn't matter how careful she is — the kid's gonna die," I replied.

We squealed around a corner, rocketing through a red light. I braced myself against the door handle, the knife gripped tightly in my free hand. I didn't think our driver was gonna be a problem, but Bishop was another matter. As far as I knew, he might be halfway around the world right now, but even if he were, he wouldn't stay that way for long. If he'd found his way back in time to see our little traffic stunt, our new friend here'd become a liability right quick. If that happened, I had to be ready. No qualms. No hesitation.

Still, I hoped for all our sakes it wouldn't come to that.

The woman glanced at Kate in the rear-view. Her eyes narrowed. "You're that girl from the news, aren't you? The one that killed her family."

Kate said nothing.

"You think that silly punker get-up's going to fool people for long? Your picture's been on every television in the city. It's just a matter of time before they find you."

"Just shut up and drive," Kate said.

"I'm trying," the woman replied, and then, as she screamed past her intended turn: "Shit!"

Do you have any idea where we're going?" I asked her.

"Do you?" she shot back.

I thought a moment. "St Vincent's is close, if it's still around. But we shoulda been there by now."

"It is," she said, "although it hasn't been St Vincent's for years. And we would have been, if I weren't pointed in the wrong direction when you stopped me. You would have done better to carjack someone headed south."

"A lot's changed since the last time I was here. That's kind of why you're doing the driving," I said. "Now get us turned around, and quick."

"What's to stop me from just driving straight to the police?"

"This, for one," I said, brandishing the knife. "But more importantly, there's no time. You take the time to turn us in, the boy dies. You look like a decent person to me. I think you're gonna make the right choice."

"They'll almost certainly apprehend you when we reach the hospital," she replied.

"Then what exactly is the problem? Now if you wanna get out of this alive, you're gonna shut your mouth and get us to the hospital, you hear?"

I was kinda shocked she listened, but I guess she'd already said her piece. She just gripped the wheel and drove like it was the last lap at Indy, barreling down the street with breakneck speed — and ignoring every light, every sign, every lane marker on the way. Had her lips not been pursed in grim concentration, I'd have thought she was enjoying herself. Of course, right now, I couldn't give a shit about her motivation — all I cared was that we get Anders some help before it was too late.

It wasn't till we picked up a tail that I realized what she was doing.

He came screaming out of a Dunkin Donuts parking lot about a half a block back, siren blaring. Red and white lights strobed through the cabin of the Volvo.

"Sam," Kate said, "we've got company!"

I glanced back. The cop was gaining fast. A triumphant smirk flickered across our driver's face, and the speedometer needle began to drop as she coasted toward the shoulder.

I held the knife up to her neck, and she went rigid in her seat. I said, "You do not stop, you hear me? You just keep on driving till you get us where we're going."

The driver said, "I–I can't just ignore him."

"That's exactly what you're gonna do."

"There'll be more of them, you know, and not just behind. If they cut us off, I'll have no choice but to stop."

"If you stop this car before you get us to the hospital, I swear you'll wish you hadn't. Drive through them if you have to. This kid is not dying on my watch. Am I clear?"

She nodded. The fear in her eyes had returned. That was good. The cop was gaining, though. That was bad. The funny thing was, I didn't see any others. At the time, I didn't know why, but that fact — which should have comforted me — instead left me with a gnawing pit of worry where my stomach should have been.

Of course, it didn't help that Anders stopped breathing.

It wasn't a peaceful sort of thing, either, like drifting away in the quiet hours of the night. It was more like a flailing, writhing, drowning-on-dry-land sort of thing. Anders' limbs swung wildly through the cabin of the Volvo, one leg connecting hard with the back of the driver's head and sending the car careening onto the sidewalk toward a darkened storefront. I grabbed the wheel and jerked us back onto the street, receiving a glancing blow to the temple for my trouble. Kate was shrieking, and Anders was making a horrid, gasping noise that sounded like a pipe organ collapsing on itself.

Our driver was shouting now, too, in fear and panic, and to her credit had us more or less back on track. Things got dicey for a second as we leapt the center divider, and the sudden glare of approaching headlights made a collision seem imminent, but she yanked the wheel to the right, and sent the car sailing back into our lane in a rain of sparks and a squeal of rending metal.

And still, our pursuer remained.

We were close now, the structure of the hospital looming over the tops of the timeworn Colonials that surrounded it. Anders' flailing had died down, but it was hard to take that as a good thing. Not to mention, I had no fucking idea what I was gonna do about the cop. One thing's for sure — planning's never been my strong suit. Eh — if I was right, and this girl's soul really did hold the fate of the world in the balance, at least I'd know that God has got a sense of humor. I mean, shit, he could've sent her a savior with a clue.

In the distance, a backlit sign jutted from a wellmanicured garden, marking the hospital entrance. I pressed the knife to our driver's side. "You don't slow down until we reach the entrance, you hear me? No signal, no warning, nothing." She just nodded, her eyes never leaving the road. A good little trouper, that one. I confess I was relieved — the last thing I needed was more innocent blood on my hands.

When the turn came, she didn't hit the brakes, she just yanked the wheel. The car skittered a second, and then the back tires caught, and we rocketed forward. Thank God she'd listened to what I said. If she hadn't, we would have all been dead.

The police cruiser slammed into our car with a spray of glass and the sickening crunch of metal on metal. His front end connected with our back-left fender, and we one-eightied. The car rocked hard on its shocks as we slammed into the curb, but it could have been worse. Had we slowed to take the turn, he'd have caught us dead to rights, and we'd have rolled for sure.

The cop was out of his car — which had beached itself on the hospital's now-ruined sign — in a flash. His gun was drawn, and he was running toward us, closing the gap between his wreck and ours with lightning speed. Our driver looked stunned, confused, but I wasn't — not anymore. It was clear now why he'd pursued us alone, why he'd never called for backup: this guy was no more a cop than I was. It was Bishop, back to finish what he'd started.

The bastard was good — I'd give him that. I'd hoped Pinch's death had at least bought us some time. I'd hoped we'd lost him — that he was strapped to a bed in some old folks' home in Dubai or something, never to be seen again. I'd hoped that maybe, just maybe, we'd catch a little break. Turns out, I'd barely even slowed him down.

Shows what hoping will get you.

Bishop must've been waiting for us. Listening. He knew we couldn't flee the park without causing a scene, so he camped out in the nearest cop and waited for the calls to come rolling in. If I had to guess, I'd say his meat-suit's partner was standing outside Dunkin Donuts with a handful of coffee and crullers, wondering where the hell his buddy and their cruiser went.

I looked our driver in the eye. She looked at me, and then at Bishop, clearly registering the hate and anger that strained the features of his borrowed face. "Listen, lady, we need to move."

"What?" she asked. Her voice seemed small and faraway.

"That guy's not friendly. There's no time to explain — you're just gonna hafta trust me."

"Trust you? How could I, when you hurt that boy…"

"I just told you that so you'd do as I said. It was him," I said, gesturing toward the approaching cop. "You hear me, it was him!"

Whether it was my words or her own instincts, something got through. She slammed the car into gear, and lurched forward, jerking the wheel toward Bishop as he raised his gun to fire. The movement caught him off-guard, and he squeezed off a few wild shots. Two slammed through the front end of the car, and the engine quit, but we just kept on rolling. The third punched through the windshield, and our driver screamed in pain.

I barely took a moment to register her injury — a spray of blood against the driver's side window, a hand clutching the meat of her shoulder — before I leapt out of the moving car and sprinted toward Bishop. He'd fallen backward onto the pavement, dodging the surging Volvo, and I threw myself atop him as he struggled to bring the gun to bear.

Cold steel pressed against my cheek. A deafening blast rocked the night. I clenched shut my eyes in anticipation of the expulsion to come. I was sure that this was curtains. Instead, a sudden warmth trickled down my ear, and the world went quiet. My face was stippled with burns from the particulates, but I was otherwise OK.

The bastard had missed.

Again, Bishop tried to aim the barrel toward me, but the report of the last shot had weakened his tenuous grip. I grabbed his wrist and slammed his hand to the ground. The gun clattered to the pavement, just out of reach. Bishop lay pinned beneath me, and I swung wildly, again and again, connecting with his cheek, his jaw, his nose. My damaged eardrum throbbed in time with the thudding of my heart, with the rhythm of my flailing blows. I forced myself to hold back — just a touch — and remember the innocent within. The last thing I needed was another death on my conscience, and anyway, unconscious would do just fine.

At some point, he stopped fighting. I thought it was a ploy. Then I caught his fearful gaze, leveled not at me, but at the Volvo. A feint? Maybe. But I bit, nonetheless. I hazarded a glance, and was glad I did.

The car had finally stopped rolling, coming to a rest against the far curb. As I watched, our driver pushed open her door, and doubled over, retching in the gutter.

I leapt up off of the pavement, or as near to leapt as my weary bones could manage. Our driver rose, leaning heavily on her open door as she wiped absently at her mouth with the back of her hand. She turned toward the rear door of the car, an oblivious Kate behind it, still struggling to keep pressure on Anders' wound. Lucky for me, the driver was so focused on Kate that she never glanced back.

I sprinted toward the Volvo, desperate to stop our driver from reaching Kate. At the last moment, the woman wheeled toward me. I kicked the open driver's side door with all I had. It slammed shut hard on her, bouncing back open as she crumpled to the ground. I lay a moment, winded, willing my battered limbs to move.

The knife was a surprise. Not the happy cake-andballoons kind, either. More like the gut-wrenching, excruciating, hope-you-don't-black-out kind. I must've left it in the cab of the car when I'd gone after the cop. Wherever I'd left the knife, driver-lady/Bishop had found it, and was kind enough to return it to me, by which I mean she planted it a good three inches into the meat of my thigh. Blade scraped bone, and for a second, everything went dark.

When the lights came back on, the nice driver-lady was standing over me, the knife — blade down — raised high above her head. A wicked smile warped her otherwise kind features. I tried to move. My legs weren't listening. Kate watched helpless through the car window — I willed her to run, but she just sat there, frozen.

The blade dropped. Actually, the whole damn woman dropped. Just collapsed atop me like so much rubble. I rolled her off of me. The knife fell from her hand, coming to rest in the grass just beyond the curb.

Standing just behind her former perch above me was the cop — his face swollen and bloodied, his sidearm in one hand, a small tuft of blood and hair dotting the barrel from where he'd pistol-whipped the woman. He extended his free hand to help me up. I took it.

"That thing," he said, "is it unconscious, too? Or will it just grab hold of someone else?"

I could barely hear him over the ringing in my ears. I looked down at the woman. She was out cold. "Yeah," I replied, "it's out, too — but probably not for long."

"It was in my head. I mean, I was just sittin' in my cruiser, and next thing I knew, I was puking my guts out, and I wasn't in control. That's fucking nuts, right? I mean, I must be fucking nuts."

"No," I said. "You're not nuts."

"It wanted to kill you."

"It was after the girl. I was in the way."

"The girl — she's the one from the news? The one we've been looking for?"

"Yeah."

"She didn't do it, did she? Kill her family, I mean."

"No, I don't believe she did."

The cop glanced back toward the hospital. The entrance was a few hundred yards away; it looked like a crowd was gathering. I thought I heard sirens, although that could've been the ringing in my ears. As I stood shakily between the wrecks of the cruiser and the Volvo, our unconscious driver at my feet, it was hard to believe this whole fucking mess had gone down in a matter of seconds.

The cop caught my glance, and no doubt he heard the sirens better than I. "They'll be here soon," he said. "The paramedics. The cops. You should go — just take the girl and leave. I'll clean up this mess."

"There's a boy in the car. He's hurt."

"I know. I… remember, I guess. I'll see to him. What about her?" He nodded toward the woman at our feet.

"Long as we're gone when she wakes up, Bishop's got no reason to stick around."

"Bishop," the cop repeated. "Is that its name?"

"No one's left that knows his name," I replied. "Bishop's close as we can get."

"That's not how it thinks of itself," he said.

"No?"

"No."

"What, then? What does Bishop call himself?"

"God," he said, his voice catching in his throat. "That thing believes it's God."