Dead Harvest

  'Stay where you are!' he shouted, his sandpaper growl slathered with a goodly helping of Bronx.

  'I'm unarmed!' I replied. His eyes narrowed in suspicion, nearly disappearing between the flesh of his cheeks and meaty brow. If he hadn't planned on frisking me before, he sure as shit was gonna now.

  Fine by me. The closer I could get to him, the better chance we had.

  'Put your hands on your head.' I complied. The cop holstered his nightstick and approached. 'Now turn around.' Again, I did as he asked.

  His hands were the size of hams, and he was none too gentle patting me down. My muscles tensed in anticipation. When he gave my bum leg a good thwack, I made my move. And by made my move, I mean fell down.

  Well, mostly, at least. Mr Suspicious here made my job easy by not skipping over the pound of gauze I had wrapped around my wound, and who could blame him? After all, the bandage gave me ample room to stash a weapon, and I was plenty shifty. His only mistake was in not knowing it was my hands he had to be afraid of.

  When his hand connected with the bandaged meat of my thigh, I let out a wail. My leg buckled. That part wasn't just for show, but I'd expected it – in fact, I was counting on it. I twisted as I fell, so that we were chest to chest when he did his cop-ly duty and caught me. Or, rather, we would have been chest to chest, had my hands not been between us.

  I plunged them both deep into his chest, grabbing hold of his soul with all I had. His eyes went wide, his features slack. The medical tent, the station, the pavement beneath our feet – all of it disappeared, replaced with a swirling morass of grays and blues and the occasional shining points of light, sparkling like stars as they orbited breakneck all around us. This was a good man, I realized – touched by darkness, but not consumed by it. It was then that I resolved not to kill him.

  Soul in hand, I yanked, and now it was the cop who wailed. His pained cry brought tears to my borrowed eyes, but I had no time for such sympathies. His wails died suddenly as he collapsed, shuddering, to the ground – in shock, no doubt. But my work was not yet finished. I took care to reseat his soul just as I had found it, hoping that when he regained consciousness, all would be right in his world. Somehow, though, I doubted it. I only hoped I hadn't changed him for the worse.

  When I released my grip on his soul, the world lurched back into focus. I found I was sprawled out on Park Avenue, lying half on and half off of my new cop-friend. Our tussle, which lasted a second at most, had drawn a small audience – two EMTs and a nurse on their way into the medical tent stood frozen in their tracks, staring. All looked puzzled by what had just happened, and at least one of them – a lean, angular Latina EMT – was clearly measuring the odds that I was dangerous against the odds the cop needed her help.

  I took pity on her and clarified the matter: I popped the snap on the cop's holster and slid free his piece – a sleek black Glock 9mm, lighter than I'd anticipated. Then I hobbled back to the tent and grabbed Kate by the wrist, yanking her out into the street. I couldn't help but notice the cops in the tent were closing fast. In seconds, they'd be upon us.

  'What are you waiting for?' I brandished the gun at our trio of onlookers. 'The man needs help!'

  Without a word, they sprung into action, racing to the felled cop's side and checking for vitals. Now it was Kate who stood frozen in obvious puzzlement, watching as they loosened his uniform collar and tried in vain to rouse him.

  'Kate, come on!'

  But she didn't respond – she just stood there, watching. 'Did you…' she asked, the question trailing off to nothing. 'I mean, is he–'

  'He's unconscious,' I replied. 'With luck, he'll be just fine. You won't though, unless we get moving.'

  That seemed to shake off her preoccupation with the unconscious cop. She followed my lead as I hobbled north-west toward Vanderbilt. My leg was throbbing again, but I ignored it, gritting my teeth against the pain and forcing this meat-suit into a jog. Even Kate, uninjured, struggled to keep up.

  'Sam, where the hell are we going?'

  But as we rounded the corner onto Vanderbilt, her eyes went wide. Just fifty yards away sat a medevac chopper, idling in a makeshift pen of police barriers at the intersection of Vanderbilt and Forty-third.

  'I'm not exactly sure,' I replied. 'But I know how we're gonna get there.'

26.

'Sam, you can't be serious.' Kate stopped dead in the street, looking first at me, and then at the helicopter that sat idling in the center of the intersection – its upper rotor still, but its engines emitting a high, keening whine.

  'The way I see it, Kate, we don't have a lot of options.'

  'But we can't just steal a helicopter.'

  'We're not stealing a helicopter – we're hijacking one. And of course we can; I'm one of the bad guys, remember?'

  'It's not that – it's just, I mean, they're not going to let us get away with it.'

  'Kate, they're not going to let us get away period, if they have their way. This is the only shot we've got.'

  From behind us, shouting. Our pursuers had cleared the tent, and it was clear now they weren't the only ones on our tail: two parties of six or so uniformed men had just finished flanking the tent on either side, and onlookers pressed ever tighter to the police barriers that cordoned off the station as officers on all sides of us abandoned their posts to join the chase. Standing in the empty stretch of street between the tent and the makeshift landing pad, Kate and I had nowhere to hide. As the men approached, guns drawn, I grabbed Kate by the arm and together we ran for the chopper. This time, she didn't argue.

  The helicopter was facing north-east toward Fortythird, away from us, and the cabin door was open, though we could not see inside. Kate and I approached the door cautiously, creeping toward it along the tail. A glance