Dead Harvest

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.'

22.

'Sam, what the hell are you doing?'

  'Just stand back.'

  I peeled my blood-soaked undershirt from my frame and wrapped it tightly around my bruised and battered fist. The blood seeped between my fingers, cold and slick in the chill night air. I was painfully aware that this blood wasn't mine to shed, and the fact that Bishop had a hand in shedding it did little to assuage my guilt. Of course, if I was right about the girl, any blood shed in the cause of keeping her safe was an acceptable loss. I just couldn't help but wonder if Pinch and Anders would disagree.

  I swung my arm as hard as I could, connecting with the window of the Taurus and sending a spray of glass scattering through the cabin. I winced in anticipation of an alarm – one of the most horrid inventions of the modern age, as far as I'm concerned – but there was none. I popped open the door from the inside, and snatched the duffel bag from the back seat with my unbound hand. Very slick little smash-and-grab, I thought – smooth and professional.

  That's when I fell down.

  We were at the far end of the parking lot from the mess we'd left behind, obscured from view of the first responders by the rambling hodge-podge buildings of the medical center itself. We'd hovered at a distance long enough to watch them intubate Anders and wheel him into the ER, and then we split. They worked quickly on him, swarming like bees on a hive. I took that to be a good sign – it meant they thought they had a chance of saving him. I hoped to God they could – I'd seen enough death for one day, and damned or not, my conscience couldn't take another.

  Our driver was another story. She came to just as we'd left the scene, and her injuries appeared minor. After what she'd experienced, I was reasonably sure she wouldn't roll on us, but I couldn't swear to it. Besides, our new cop friend had his hands full explaining just what in hell went down, and when they realized his story didn't add up, you'd better believe they were gonna fan out and check the area. I didn't plan to be there when they did.

  All of which sounded nice, but there was a catch, in the form of a throbbing knife wound in my thigh. Truth is, I could barely support my own weight, and I'd lost enough blood that I was feeling pretty woozy. If I couldn't stanch the flow of blood, the whole fleeing thing was kind of out of the question. Which brought me to the car.

  Now, I'll admit, hightailing it to the ass-end of the campus on a skewered leg doesn't sound like the brightest of ideas, but I had my reasons. I'm sure I could've found what I was looking for a little more close by, in one of the Beemers, Land Rovers, and Audis that populated the doctors' spaces. Problem was, they were a little too visible for my taste, located close to major entrances as they were, and you can be damn sure they'd have alarms. So I had to settle for something a little more working-class, in a nice, little out-of-the way section of the lot that looked to be reserved for support staff – nurses and the like – with nary a Mercedes in sight.