Table Of ContentTHE LAST DAYS
Six post-apocalyptic thrillers
Bitter Harvest (Season of the Harvest #2)
by Michael R. Hicks
Origins (The Wasteland Chronicles #2)
by Kyle West
Infected (Slow Burn #2)
by Bobby Adair
The Shock (After #1)
by Scott Nicholson
The Onset (Contamination #1)
byT.W. Piperbrook
Melt Down (Breakers #2)
by Edward W. Robertson
BITTER HARVEST
(Harvest Trilogy, Book 2)
Michael R. Hicks
Get the first Harvest book free!
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events
portrayed in this novel are products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously.
ISBN: 978-0984673087
BITTER HARVEST (HARVEST TRILOGY, BOOK 2)
Copyright © 2012 by Imperial Guard Publishing, LLC
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions
thereof, in any form.
Published by Imperial Guard Publishing AuthorMichaelHicks.com
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing a book is always a team effort, and this one is certainly no
exception.
To start off, I’d like to thank Tom Swigart, a longtime friend and colleague
who taught me how to add, and helped me figure out just how bad the harvester
plague was going to be.
Then there’s my primary editing team: Mindy Schwartz, Steph Hansen,
Marianne Søiland, and Frode Hauge. They spent a lot of time going through my
mishmash of prose, and through their efforts my writing skills (and your reading
experience) continue to improve.
After the editors come the beta readers, who had the joyful task of reading
through the edited draft and helping me refine it. I’d like to offer a big round of
applause to Melody Rose, Kevin Boucher, Jay Lamborn, Rich Duncan, Patricia
Egen, and Tera Montgomery for their time and patience in helping me make this
book a better reading experience for my readers (like you).
Last, but certainly not least, I’d like to thank my wife, Jan, who is my alpha
reader. Her support and faith in what I can do have helped lead us into a new
life, and I love her all the more for it.
FOREWORD
This is the second book of the Harvest Trilogy, and picks up the tale a year
after the events described in Season Of The Harvest. If you haven’t read that first
book yet, I highly recommend that you do, especially since it’s free as an ebook.
If you just want to dive into Bitter Harvest, that’s okay, too, as there’s enough
backstory in this book that you won’t be completely lost. I hope.
Now it’s time to buckle up, dear reader, for the ride is about to begin…
CHAPTER ONE
“Are you worried?”
Bryce Moore glanced over at Angelina Matheson, who rode in the
passenger seat as he drove the rented sedan east across the Arlington Memorial
Bridge into Washington, D.C. It was late January, and the temperature was
hovering in the mid-thirties. The landscape was still draped in a mantle of snow
left by the worst storm of the winter, two days before. White sheets of ice clung
to the banks of the Potomac River, a stark contrast to the dingy gray frozen muck
that lined the roads. Directly ahead, the Lincoln Monument rose from the white
landscape like a tremendous ice sculpture, framed by yet more threatening, gray
clouds. The weather forecasts all predicted more snow.
Fortunately for those concerned about such things, the previous storm had
hit after the inauguration ceremony. Bryce suppressed a cringe as he recalled the
election campaign that had culminated in a crushing defeat for the incumbent
party in November. To call it acrimonious would have been a ridiculous
understatement. President Norman Curtis had made clear early on that he had no
plans to run for reelection. This had saved him the embarrassment of not being
offered the nomination. There would be no political redemption for a president
who had authorized a nuclear strike on American soil during peacetime, no
matter the reason. Most of his remaining time in office had been divided
between helping people in central California where the bomb had detonated, and
fending off impeachment proceedings by Congress. There had also been a lot of
talk on the Hill about forming a war crimes commission.
The opposing party’s candidate had carried the election in a landslide.
But the question of what to do about Curtis lingered. As far as the public
knew, the bomb he had ordered dropped over Sutter Buttes in California had
been to save the world from a biological super-weapon developed by the Earth
Defense Society. The EDS, as it was more popularly known, had been described
as a terrorist group, and was blamed for a series of worldwide attacks that had
destroyed the world’s largest repositories of seeds, killing thousands of people in
the process. The public story was that the FBI had hunted down the Earth
Defense Society and cornered its members in a Cold War-era missile base north
of Sutter Buttes. That was when the government found out, or so the story went,
that there was a biological weapon in the base that, were it ever released into the
atmosphere, could potentially obliterate human life on the planet.
Faced with that nightmare possibility, Curtis had ordered a B-52 to destroy
the base with a nuclear weapon.
In the aftermath, the administration had proclaimed that the Earth Defense
Society had been destroyed, and that the FBI and the United States Air Force
had saved the human species from extinction.
As Bryce, Angelina, and a handful of others knew, this story was a lie
carefully bound by strands of truth. If a war crimes commission were formed to
investigate the dropping of the bomb, it would inevitably lead to the exposure of
that truth.
More than that, it would no doubt lead to the revelation that two of the
Earth Defense Society’s most prominent members, Jack Dawson and Naomi
Perrault, who had both been at the top of the FBI’s most wanted list, were alive.
Not only that, President Curtis had created a highly secret agency to investigate
the true origins of what insiders had come to call the “EDS affair,” and had put
Dawson and Perrault, with fabricated identities, in charge. If that secret ever
leaked, though the EDS had been the “good guys,” the political ramifications, at
home and abroad, would be staggering.
The personal implications for Jack and Naomi, who had accepted Curtis’s
offer to start new lives as Bryce Moore and Angelina Matheson, could be fatal.
Jack grimaced as he recalled the last video teleconference he and Naomi
had held with Curtis, who had always used their real names in the tightly
controlled meetings and video sessions. The now-former president had held
meetings, by video or face to face in the White House, every two weeks. For a
long time, before the truth had been revealed, Jack and Naomi had thought he
was a collaborator with the true enemy, what they called the harvesters. But like
the other “collaborators” the harvesters had gathered around them, Curtis had
been duped, and had spent the rest of his time in office trying to atone for the sin
of ignorance. While Jack had never liked the man, he had come to respect him.
But the last words he spoke to Jack and Naomi as the President of the
United States offered little comfort. “This is it,” he had told them. Deep lines of
worry were etched across his forehead. “I’ve spoken to the incoming
administration and briefed President Elect Miller on your agency and mission.
Unfortunately…” He bit his lip and looked away for a moment in a gesture that
had profoundly disturbed Jack. It was the first time he had ever seen Curtis
falter. “Unfortunately, he thought the entire thing was a bunch of hogwash.”
“What?” Naomi had leaned forward, her face a mask of disbelief.
“I assume you had the Secret Service detail verify his status?” Jack asked.
Curtis nodded. “Yes, it was done with our feline friends and thermal
imagers.” He looked down at the top of the conference room table for a moment.
Then he said, “The transition between the administrations has been strained, to
say the least. Daniel Miller doesn’t want anything more to do with me than is
necessary, and I can’t really blame him. Who would believe any of this? The
only reason I do is that one of the bloody things tried to kill me. And the rest of
it…” He waved a hand dismissively.
“Where does that leave our agency?” Beyond their own safety, Jack and
Naomi had been worried about the vital work they had been doing at the Soil
Erosion Analysis Laboratory, or SEAL, the boring-sounding name given as a
cover to their agency. “There’s still an enormous threat out there.”
“I just don’t know,” Curtis told him. “I just don’t know.”
The summons to come to Washington and meet with the new
administration officials had finally come after Curtis was out of the White House
and Miller had been sworn in as president. Jack and Naomi, using their aliases,
of course, had flown from their small agency’s headquarters in San Antonio,
Texas to Reagan National Airport. It had been the first communication from the
administration, despite repeated calls and emails. They had simply been
stonewalled.
Upon their arrival in Washington, instead of being met by a limousine and
driven to the White House as they had been in the past, they’d had to rent a car
for the drive to the vice president’s residence on the grounds of the U.S. Naval
Observatory in northwest D.C.
It was not an auspicious beginning.
“Jack, did you hear me?” Naomi always called him Jack, because the
middle name of his alias was John, just as her identity conveniently had Naomi
as one of two middle names. It hadn’t been intended for convenience, although
they tended to use it as such, but for security. In case they slipped in public,
there was a plausible explanation. She reached over and gently gripped his arm.
“I’m sorry.” He blew out a breath. “Yeah, I’m worried. I understand Miller
wanting to keep Curtis at the end of a ten foot pole. But giving us the cold
shoulder all this time…”
“I know. I think what worries me more is that we haven’t heard from
Richards.”
Carl Richards had been a senior Federal Bureau of Investigation special
agent who, through a series of tragedies in the EDS affair and his status of hero
at its explosive conclusion, had wound up as the acting Director of the FBI. He
had worked closely with Jack and Naomi, but a week ago had stopped returning
their calls. Jack had been worried that something had happened to the irascible
man, but Dr. Renee Vintner, another survivor of the Earth Defense Society who
worked as a consultant for the FBI, had assured him that Richards was fine, at
least physically.
“But something’s up,” Renee had said. “He won’t tell me anything about it,
but I know he’s really upset.”
Jack took the exit for the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway and headed
north past the Kennedy Center and the Watergate Hotel. “I can’t believe Carl
would hang us out to dry.”
“I know he wouldn’t if we were in danger,” Naomi answered. “But he’s
also a creature of duty, Jack. If Miller’s tightened his leash, Carl isn’t going to
fight it. That’s just the way he is.”
Jack couldn’t think of anyone he’d want covering his back more than
Richards, but Naomi was right. So long as Richards wasn’t asked to do anything
illegal or downright underhanded, he would do what his boss said.
They drove in silence the rest of the way, both too preoccupied with
whatever awaited them to enjoy the winter beauty of snow-covered Montrose
Park. Jack got off on Waterside Drive, then took a left onto Massachusetts
Avenue. He drove around to the north entrance of the Naval Observatory
compound, where he and Naomi presented their identification to the guards.
After checking the computer in the guard post, the anti-vehicle gates were
lowered, and they headed in.
The vice president’s residence at Number One Observatory Circle was
originally built to house the superintendent of the U.S. Naval Observatory, and
was located in the northeast quadrant of the circular compound. Jack parked
where the guard had indicated.
Naomi had read that the house boasted more than nine thousand square feet
of living space, but Jack wasn’t sure how they had shoehorned that much into
the compact-looking structure that had been built in the Queen Anne style, with
a prominent turret and large veranda gracing the front.
As they got out of the car, they were met by four Secret Service agents,
who again checked their identification cards and drivers licenses before
escorting them up a set of stairs and into the house through the rear entrance.
Jack had to restrain himself from shaking his head as they were led through
the kitchen. Leaning close to Naomi, he whispered, “Are we such an
embarrassment that we can’t just come through the front door like everyone
else?”
“Looks like it.” She spoke the words through gritted teeth, and Jack could
see the color rising in her cheeks. She was furious.
