The Harvest Cycle

Prologue. In the Year of the Fiftieth Harvest.

May 2061 looked down on a Gotham, Indiana that had been given over completely to Nature and her legions. Flora, fauna and fungi had all established kingdoms within the skeleton towers of the city and the barren, cracked streets which threaded through the skyscrapers like stillborn rivers carving out canyons of steel and dust.

The plants had climbed to the peaks of the tallest buildings, the fungus owned the tunnels beneath the city floor and the animals held the streets in their tireless dance of life and death.

Man had gone under, far under, beneath the sewers and subway tunnels into the other city that existed beneath. Access corridors, government warehouses, power plants and water purification facilities were home to a new community under Gotham. Even further down were mine tunnels and natural caverns, but those were left to the dreamers, the ones who still bade the Harvesters to come and reap them.

Some of the hydroelectric plants still functioned, albeit on a limited scale. A few of the city grids were still working, including that which had as its cornerstone the Gotham Hospital tower. Most of its resources had long ago been plundered, its windows shattered, doors torn away; but still there was power, and still surgical suites that could, in theory, be used in times of great need. That was, if anyone dared to venture above ground, to taunt the Harvesters in their secret cloisters.

Jack DaVinci had no business with the Harvesters. He had no business with the surface world, but the bullets jostling about in his guts had gotten to be more than just detritus lying in the gutter, they’d gotten into his good parts and were gumming up the works and now the nurses in their decades-old threadbare scrubs were wheeling him through a dusty main entrance, glass cracking beneath the wheels of the gurney, dead lights overhead. We’ll have to get him up the stairs somehow, said one of the doctors. Jack moved a bit and felt the bullets rolling in his belly. Bastards. He’d hoped he’d never have to bother with them. Brushing back his silvery hair, the tired man tried to sit up a little. I can walk—

No sir, the doc said, I don’t want them moving again. We know where they are and we’re going to take them out. Just lie back, please, and let’s get you upstairs.

It’s not worth the trouble, he thought, coming up into the hospital just for him. What did he do that was so important? He supposed he was the best cop that they had under Gotham; he knew all the faces and names and they respected his authority. They all knew him by that jacket, the old thing still clinging to him after all these years. It was an overcoat from the turn of the century, a detective’s jacket, as some described it; he supposed he was a detective of sorts. And he liked it, didn’t he, standing out in off-white amongst the gray. Everyone else wore scrubs and boiler suits, threads either durable or disposable. Wasn’t much color. No need for it. Everything was practical and that was it. Except Jack’s overcoat was a little something, a little bit of character. And those bullets in his guts told a few stories.

Secretly, Jack liked being somebody. And maybe he was gonna be sad to see the bullets go, excised, like so many of the things that made someone a somebody. But they had to go or else he was going too.

The crew made their way up the staircase, collapsing the gurney’s legs and lifting Jack up the stairs. It was dark and dank and quiet except for little torch lights they’d made with old bulbs and crude batteries culled from magnetic scrap, and now Jack almost felt like he was going to church. Bless these bullets, Father, bless my empty brain. Bless my Colt revolver and my graying hair. Bless these people who are going to sustain me so I can sustain them.

They reached the right floor, and the wheels came back, and now there were lights, chasing the spiders away, warming the vines that threaded through the ceiling structure. Jack stared up at a canopy of steel and leaves as he was brought into the operating room.

We prepped it last week. Cut all the plants away, tested the equipment. You’re going to be fine, sir.

Anesthesia.

Vitals, again.

Who shot you? a young nurse asked through her face mask.

Jack smiled. I don’t remember. I don’t even care.

There were two of them, he knew, that had stayed with him. Stayed in the bone and had now come out to tour the rest of him, to see what further ruin they could cause.

I appreciate all of you coming up here, doing this... There was a prick in his arm. It burned at first, briefly, then numbness spread, a sweet warmth. You’re heroes, you know.

Windows are all blocked, the doctor said. We’re good. Ready?

Ready, Jack?

Cut me open.

* * *

He’d been cut before. It was something they all did, save the dreamers who went down into the caverns to live a life of fear and flight. Jack had been cut early, as a boy, having been born just after the First Harvest. People had started to realize just what the Harvesters wanted. Then it was a matter of finding it themselves and cutting it out.

The neoplasmic lobe was a tiny nodule nestled between the hemispheres in the anterior brain. The procedure, once perfected, made for a simple outpatient appointment. Jack had been among the early ones, even before they went underground. They hadn’t gone underground because of the Harvesters, of course. That was because of the Others.

And there were stories rolling around in his bloody gut about them.

Awake. Panic. Voices shouting.

What are they doing?

Jack sat up, his fingertips brushing the sutures in his abdomen, and snapped his fingers at the nurses lined up along the no-longer-blocked windows. What’s going on?

Some dreamers have come up, and they’re across the street... A pretty girl turned towards him and tried to help tie his bedclothes. You need to recover.

"Get my jacket.

And my gun.

* * *

Down and across the street, an ages-old fuel station.

Two men siphoning vintage gasoline into plastic tanks. Right up through the concrete, no messing with the dead pumps.

How much do you think is really left? asked Hitch.

West shrugged. Whatever’s left is left.

Is it really worth standing out here at high noon?

Who else is out here? C’mon, Hitch. God damn it. This is our right, don’t you think?

Just don’t know what it’s for, said Hitch. He scratched his beard and looked up at the skeleton towers. You gonna explain all this once we’re back home?

Home, West spat. Yes. I’ll explain it. It’s not like I’ve left you in the dark. You know what I’m doing.

I know you want to move, but there’s something else. Hitch narrowed his eyes, so much like West’s eyes. They’d all taken on the same scruffy bearded look, but Hitch’s was shorter and darker, the only difference between himself and the rest these days. They all had those same eyes, though: gleaming, searching.

Richard Hitch Haledjian had the wanderlust. That was how he expressed his restlessness. But it wasn’t to wander out across the dead continent...it was, rather, to wander further below. He mapped the caverns and the old mine tunnels, did what he could to expand their humble home. But West wanted to leave. He believed that the surface world was theirs, by birthright, by God.

West spoke. Yeah, there’s something else. It’s—

A bullet ricocheted off the nearest pump. It was definitely a bullet. The report echoed for blocks.

Run.

Hefting their plastic tanks beneath their arms, West and Hitch sprinted across the cement pad, across the old intersection, and as they did they heard a voice:

Stop in the name of the law!

West laughed. "He shot first! He shot first! Are you fucking kidding? He shouted over his shoulder, Fucker, we know what’s waiting for us back there and YOU’RE NO BETTER THAN THE OTHERS!!"

Hitch was just pumping his legs as hard as he could, muscles far past burning, past rubbery numbness, just flying down the street toward the sewer outlet from whence they’d come. Bullets! For a little gas, for that heap of rusted shit called a van that had been sitting, rusting and rotting, in the tunnels for months and that might not even start what with all the parts Doctor West had pulled out and rebuilt and put back in...

But he was West. Michael West, doctor of God knew what, robotics or dentistry or whatever was necessary at any given moment.

Hitch’s moccasins were flayed open as he skittered down a concrete abutment toward the tunnel entrance, right on the doctor’s heels.

He was West, the man with the plan, the man with the van, the man with the girl. He had Amanda. It was Amanda and West working under the van. In the van. What had been Hitch’s was now West’s, and he was supposed to just nod along politely and wait to hear what the next great step in the great plan was?

Not now, no time for bullshit, he told himself. Still a chance some bullets could come bouncing down the tunnel and claim him. Splashing now through fetid deadwater, slogging through the shadows, into the sewer...but that voice back there was the voice of the relentless Jack DaVinci, wasn’t it? Gotham’s son. He’d never stop. Just. Like. The. Others.

West pulled Hitch into a side tunnel, a little passage that DaVinci probably wouldn’t notice. It wasn’t a side tunnel so much as a fissure in the wall. West and Hitch huddled together in suffocating darkness, water around their waists.

You know we want to help you, you know that? DaVinci cried. His voice reverberated off the walls and stirred the waters here in the tunnel, as if he were a performer in a theatre. Hitch angled his head slightly and spied DaVinci standing out there in the shit, in the river with a little electric torch in his hand, and in his other hand, the gun.

You take out the lobe, the Harvesters leave you alone! You have nothing for them then!

West knew that neoplasia meant abnormal cell growth. They treated the lobe as an aberration rather than an essential component, all part of the undreamer myth. Its removal had grave consequences, even if it staved off the Harvesters – and it didn’t account for the Others. They’d keep coming, wouldn’t they, in their twisted perfect logic. What did DaVinci have to say about that?

West stared hard at Hitch, willing him to keep quiet. Hitch shrugged as if to say, no shit, and watched DaVinci.

The cop sighed, pressed his hand to his abdomen. "I’ll leave you alone then. I’ll leave you alone, until I see you getting into our resources again. Then I won’t leave you alone. That clear?

Do you even care?

West closed his eyes. Hitch watched DaVinci’s face.

All right then.

Jack DaVinci trudged out of the sewer tunnel and into the light.

He’s not like the Others, Hitch whispered.

Same difference, West muttered, no soul. It’s the soul that makes us dreamers. Got both your tanks?

Got ‘em.

Let’s go home.

Chapter One. Under Gotham.

An older passage deep within the sewer tunnel - one that had formerly been closed off, prior to the First Harvest and man’s exodus into the underground - led down into an early system of tunnels which eventually connected with a long-defunct network of mines. As they entered this older system, West erected columns of mossy timber to block it off behind them.

Hitch had exhaustively mapped this area over the years. As he discovered natural caverns off of the mine network and receded further into the earth, further back in time, he imagined himself as an ancient ghoul, having shed his evolved skin and mind and regressed into a pale, blind animal. It was a fantasy he hadn’t shared with anyone, even Amanda.

And she wouldn’t have understood anyway. She’d long felt that Hitch was stagnating, giving in to the subterranean existence that the Harvesters and the Others had forced them into. She’d been taken by West’s passion for circumventing their terrible enemies and finding a true home in the surface world. And, eventually, when she could take no more, when she’d complained and pleaded to no avail, she’d left Hitch for the doctor.

He tried to be understanding, or at least civil. He didn’t want a war among the dreamers, although he wasn’t really certain if anyone else would have even sided with him. No, he’d played along and watched them work together and talk of the plan.

West and Hitch walked through darkness, knowing the passages by heart, waiting to see the flicker of torches up ahead. The mines were cool but not altogether freezing. Some areas were actually a bit humid. Hitch believed that there was water down here, though he had yet to locate it.

Arms are getting tired, West said, and set down his tanks of fuel. They stood quietly in pitch darkness.

Do you think DaVinci will come looking for us? Hitch asked. He said he wouldn’t, and I tend to believe him, but—

I don’t believe him for a second, West grumbled. Just the same, they haven’t found us yet, and I don’t think they will. At least not until we’ve left.

So are we all going to leave at once? How? The van will hold what, six, eight people at best? There are a hundred of us down here, West.

That’s not what the van’s for, West replied. Just wait and I’ll explain. I’ll explain it this evening, all right?

And how will you know when it’s evening? Hitch smirked. He heard the doctor sigh.

The same way I always know. West picked his tanks back up, the gas sloshing about. Look, Hitch – thanks for coming out with me today. I didn’t know we’d be putting our necks on the line, but thank you.

Hitch nodded. Anything for the plan.

I’m trying to be a nice guy here.

So am I.

Should we talk about this?

You mean about her? What more is there to say?

Hitch...we used to be friends, you know. And I’m not going to lie, I miss that. I love her, I really do...but I miss that.

I loved her too.

You still do.

Hitch nodded again, unseen in the darkness, but West was right and they both knew it.

Let’s go, West said, and trudged off down the tunnel.

* * *

Ira Buchanan was the community’s informal leader. He was a good speaker, a good listener, and a peacekeeper. Not a particularly inspiring or energetic man, Buchanan was simply familiar, comforting. A man in his late fifties with smooth gray hair and small, smiling eyes, he sat on a rock beneath a torch and held out a hand in greeting as Hitch and West entered the room, a large junction from which a few tunnels branched off.

Looks like it was a success, Buchanan said, eyeing the tanks.

Almost wasn’t, West replied. Jack DaVinci. Took a few potshots at us.

Did he follow you into the tunnels? Buchanan asked worriedly.

West shook his head. Looks like we’ve been granted a reprieve for the moment. But we’ve got to move forward with the plan.

Is the van ready?

I think so. West set his tanks down again and stretched his arms. Once it’s gassed up I might take a test run. We’ll have to be damn careful, though, out on the streets.

Getting it up to the surface is gonna be an ordeal in itself, Hitch said.

Shouldn’t be too tough. West smiled. You’re welcome to come along. You and Mandy.

Mandy. That stung.

Could be worse, when all is said and done, Buchanan said. Just think, what if the next Harvest were to come along right now?

Jesus. West shook his head. I don’t even want to think about it. I’ve been trying to calculate the cycle, looking back on previous years...but I’ve got nothing. It appears to be completely random.

Or maybe it’s whenever Nightmare chooses, Hitch said.

They all grew quiet. Nightmare. To even breathe its name chilled every man to the bone. Among the dreamers, there were some who seemed to have what West called psychic abilities, a certain sensitivity to something out there...something that had sent the Harvesters to Earth, had seeded the ocean floor with them long before the dawn of Man...something that called itself Nightmare.

What they knew for certain was that Nightmare considered itself a god. It was an alien entity from light years away, perhaps from the very nucleus of existence. And it had sent the Harvesters to reap human minds on a yearly basis, to rip and tear and suck the neoplasmic lobe from each victim’s skull...to steal the dreams of men.

The psychics who had encountered Nightmare in their sleep had each given it a different form, a different sort of terrifying manifestation. One thing they all agreed on was the voice: an off-key, sing-song voice, telling them to surrender themselves, to give in, that their animal species would be hunted and reaped every year until the end of time; allowed to recuperate and reproduce in the Harvesters’ wake, only to be assaulted again in the next year. The cycle was a cycle of chaos and horror. And Nightmare, the eternal being from the very court of chaos, was its engineer.

When the Harvesters rose from the sea they would swarm onto land and hunt the dreamers down. Hitch had never seen one himself, though he’d heard all of the tales, the legends. The Harvesters would stalk and reap for approximately thirty days before returning to the ocean, flopping into the surf and forming great cloisters deep underwater. From these cloisters, it was believed, they gathered together and sent out the stolen dreams of Man to their creator.

The Harvesters themselves were a vision born of nightmares. West was said to have seen them. Hitch had refrained thus far from asking him about it, but morbid curiosity would overcome him sooner or later. Maybe after West explained the plan, maybe then.

You’re back! she cried.

West and Hitch turned. Emerging from one of the other tunnels, Amanda pulled back her long auburn hair and threw herself into the doctor’s arms. Glancing over his shoulder at Hitch, she offered a warm smile. God, her eyes were so dark and deep in the torchlight. They absorbed what was left of his confidence. He looked down at his feet, face reddening.

Lucy was right behind me. Amanda turned with a frown and peered down the tunnel. There she is!

A small dog, Lucy’s, ran into the light. It was a lab-hound mutt, maybe a year or so old, and the girl herself was right on its heels. Nine years old, Lucy was a fragile little ginger-haired child who was barely able to catch her breath in pursuit of the puppy. Wrapping her arms around it, she waved to Hitch and West. Me and Daddy missed you. And puppy too. Did you get the gas for your trip?

Sure did. West pointed to the tanks. How is your dad?

Tired. A lot. Lucy tugged at her hair. He’s not talking again. Just tired I guess. I wish he wasn’t.

West nodded. He’d been monitoring Lucy’s father, Walter, for a while now, and was pretty sure that his botched neoplastomy, shortly before his escape into the mines, had left him lobotomized. Hitch wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but it seemed as if Walter was even worse off than the undreamers who’d done it. It seemed like he’d lost his soul and then some.

Well, let’s get down to the common area. We’ll get the gas put away, and then I’ll see your dad. West gestured to Hitch. Let’s go.

As he passed Amanda, Hitch forced a smile. She touched his arm. Good to have you back.

* * *

Further up, not quite above ground, in the subway tunnels, Jack DaVinci sat in his living quarters and folded his overcoat in the harsh glow of a halogen lamp. Then, he crawled across the floor to the lamp and removed a panel in the wall behind it. There was a jar filled with a greenish preserving fluid. Floating in the fluid were a dozen white, pea-sized nodules.

They were the lobes removed from the city’s newest citizens. DaVinci stared at the jar, turning it in front of the lamp and studying the smooth marbles of tissue.

Then, unscrewing the lid, he scooped out a handful of them and shoved them into his mouth.

They were sickly-sweet going down his throat. He closed his eyes, leaned back, waited as they were digested, absorbed into his blood, waited for the blood to reach his brain and then...

God! The feeling. Each excised lobe contained only a feeble amount of precious fluid, of the unique protein it had produced. But only that feeble amount was needed to cast blinding light into the dormant corners of his mind. As soon as it hit, the void within him suddenly filled with warmth, the colors behind his eyelids, the exuberance in his very bones. Imagination! Spirit!

He opened his eyes and looked down at his hands. He turned them, saw not the hands of a simple survivor but the hands of an artist, a sculptor, a painter, a writer. An investigator, examining clues and imagining scenarios and motives and detecting the