Harvest Time

1 - Snatched

This story is set in the same 'Universe' as Eight Excerpts From A Secret Inter-Dimensional War and  Sometimes, Spheres Don't Come Back, both of which (along with this story) will be appearing in a printed collection of short stories called Beyond Between.

Bells clanging, the confused shouting and screaming of women and children, and a stomach-churning thrumming noise all around us, caused the walls of our citadel to shake.

"Toquin," I heard my sister, Joselle, yell above the din. "Get up – Harvesters!"

I jumped from my bed just as the far end wall of the brood hall, a structure that, I understood, had stood solidly for centuries, cracked, showering shards of brick in all directions. Dust and rubble erupted as the wall began to disintegrate. Dumbfounded, I stared as brick was torn from brick until the entire wall collapsed. The ceiling that it had supported fifteen feet above our heads cracked, sagged and bowed alarmingly but, somehow, managed not to drop on top of us.

And then my gaze fell, for only the second time in all my thirteen years, on the huge machine that chewed its way through and into our sanctuary. So tall that there must have been less than a foot between its top and the bowed ceiling, it trundled into the room crushing rubble, breeder beds, milking equipment and child cots beneath its caterpillar tracks, as if they were nothing more than weeds underfoot. The shape of a tapered siege engine was like those I remembered reading about in the history books back before Peacetime had been established. But those had merely been pictures – the reality was enormous and its bulk dominated the room. The rectangular base was no less than ten by fifteen feet and the metal sides, streaked with dust and oil, rose to a top no more than eight feet across.

Seven years had passed since I had last seen such a monstrosity. I had been six and the memory of seeing my mother and father snatched away still echoed strong within my mind. Face to face once more with the reality of it, my muscles refused to operate – I was unable to move an inch.

"Run, you idiot," Joselle screamed, deliberately ripping the tubes from her nipples leaving the milk to dribble and go to waste. My muscles finally came under my control.

Around us, all the other breeders, having grasped their babies to their chests or urged their toddlers towards the exit, lumbered away from the Harvester. But, from openings in the machine curled metallic tentacles that sought out victims with calculated efficiency. One girl was caught by the ankle and lifted bodily into the air, her still dry breasts dangling while her arms windmilled and her face, eyes bulging in fear, contorted in despair. Her name was Playtona and she was barely older than myself, having come of age only one year ago. Even so, pregnant for the first time, she was already more than twice my body size. The tentacle retracted until both it and Playtona disappeared inside the advancing mechanical behemoth. Her screams, cut off so abruptly, had been almost lost in the rising cacophony.

I ran for the main entrance door but all the other breeders were trying to do the same. The way was blocked. Their attempts to squeeze their rotund bodies through the exit at the same time resulted in no one escaping. My sister stared at them and then shook her head before glancing in my direction. None of us would be getting out that way.

"Use the mirror light tunnels," she shouted, pointing up to the nearest one about four feet above my head in the wall to the left of all the milling flesh. She dragged me towards it as the Harvester snatched more victims from the main crowd.

I squatted and then jumped the nine feet to the light tunnel entrance, easily reaching it. Stooping to slide inside, my toes instinctively found places to grip. I turned back, hand outstretched, gazing down into the terror in my sister's eyes. But, I realised there was no way Joselle would be able to make the same sort of jump. Not only did her pregnancy – triplets this time as was usual for a third brood – mean that she was not able to do more than waddle, her girth would have precluded any attempt to fit into the tunnel. I stared past her, at the rest of the breeders that were being picked off two or three at a time, each one snatched into one of the open maws of the Harvester.

"Go," Joselle said as she rushed, as well as she could, for the only exit.

I heard one of the brood hall mothers shouting from outside the entrance, "One at a time – it's the only way any of you will get out."

But the Harvester was advancing again and, although several of the girls did manage to control their panic enough to get out the doorway, far more were plucked from their efforts and consumed by the metallic monster.

Joselle, still to one side and inching towards the exit, turned her head and saw me still watching.

"Go, Toquin, get away," she screamed as a tentacle encircled one of her arms. I stared, horrified, as my sister was snatched into the air and, despite her size, carried as lightly as a man would carry a newborn, before she was sucked into that dark opening.

Three more breeders were caught and disposed of in the same manner. Frozen to the spot, I watched the rest as they managed to force themselves through the door leaving the brood hall empty apart from the Harvester.

Having secured all the victims in its immediate vicinity it trundled towards the open doorway but, just before reaching it, it stopped and, after a second, swivelled in my direction.

I gasped, turned and scrabbled upwards along the angled mirror tube. At the mirror itself, I had to change direction to climb vertically, using the notches carved into the polished brick for that purpose, something I find easy even though I hadn't run along tubes this small for nearly a year. But, barely six feet up, I heard something else in the tunnel below me. I peered between my knees to see a tentacle crash into and smash the mirror. The grasping device on the end of the thing snatched at the pieces of glass and the now broken wooden frame that had held the mirror in its precise position. I held my breath hoping it was unaware that I was now above it. Maybe it had seen my reflection in the mirror and assumed it was me.

Then the tentacle disappeared. It didn't retract back along the tunnel, it just faded away.

I breathed a sigh of relief knowing it had returned beyond Between, back to the unknown world or universe from which it had come. Some said they came from Earth, the place that was rumoured to be our original home. Others say that Earth is merely a fairy tale.

Then, the shock of what had just happened overcame me. Perched in that narrow tube, illuminated by the sunlight channelled from all the mirrors above me, the tears fell from my eyes and I sobbed for Joselle, as she and I had once sobbed for my mother and father. But this time it was only me sobbing.

I knew without doubt that I would never see her again.

She had been harvested.

Thanks for reading. Please don't forget to comment and vote on this story! The second part will be along in about a week's time.