Read Online Reaping The Harvest (Harvest Trilogy, Book 3) by Michael R. Hicks - Free Book Online
Authors: Michael R. Hicks
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top secret document produced in hardcopy only, with every copy numbered and addressed to a specific individual and hand delivered by government couriers. The first copy of seventeen went to the President of the United States, and she held a photocopy of it in her hands.
In the upper right was a sticky note. “Thought you’d want to see this,” was written in Howard Morgan’s neat script.
“How the devil did you get this?” She wondered aloud as she opened it to the first page and began to read.
She soon wished she hadn’t. The ten pages of blunt prose and charts predicted the collapse of the modern world in less than two months. Even if humanity stopped the harvesters much sooner, the report stated, so much damage had already been done to the world’s largest food producing regions that widespread famine on a global scale was inevitable.
And all of it stemmed from the one bag of New Horizons seed that we couldn’t find , she thought bitterly.
She threw the document across the room, startling the cats.
Someone knocked on the door.
“What is it?”
“Naomi? Are you okay, hon?” It was Renee
“I’m fine,” she lied. “Come on in.”
Renee opened the door and stepped inside. “Listen, we just got confirmation that the Norwegian command post where Jack’s hanging out is fine,” Renee said. “The problem wasn’t EMP, it was some End-of-the-World idiots blowing up a comms center at NATO Headquarters. I wish we could come up with a genetic weapon to make the harvesters just eat morons, but I suppose there wouldn’t be many of us left. Come on, get your skinny ass up.”
Naomi tried to smile.
Renee came to stand beside the bed and put her hands on her hips. “Look at you. You’re white as a sheet and those rings under your eyes are worse than Carl’s. Keep this up and you’ll wind up as bald as he is, too. What would Jack think? He’ll probably dump you so he can shack up with me, and you can have Carl the Sourpuss. You’ll be two bald peas in a pod.”
Unable to help herself, Naomi giggled. “Renee, shut up.”
“I’ll shut up the day hell freezes over, and probably not even then. Now get your ass out of bed. One of your queries hit on something, and Harmony is going to pee her pants with excitement if you don’t get down there this instant.”
***
With a heavy sigh, Howard Morgan sat back in the black leather executive chair in his corner office on the second floor of the lab building. He turned away from the computer to look out the windows. It had never been much of a view, as the facility had been located in the middle of a rather desolate spot in the expanse of Nebraska’s farm country, and it hadn’t changed for the better as his facility had been transformed from a cutting edge genetics laboratory to a heavily defended fortress. What he saw now more closely resembled the pictures he’d seen of firebases in Afghanistan. He was trying to enjoy the sight while he could, as the Army engineers planned to cover up the few remaining glass windows with sheet metal.
He turned around to look again at the report summary on the computer screen. All the labs were on line and functioning, an accomplishment about which he would have felt extremely proud had it really mattered. It wasn’t that all the people in the sixteen labs weren’t working as hard as they could. They were, and they had accomplished miracles, like completing the map of the harvester genome. It wasn’t a question of the intelligence or resources of the people working for him, for he had the brightest people in the country, arguably on the planet, with all the resources the United States Government could provide. More than he could actually put to good use, in fact. He had been told to waste anything but time, for time was the one commodity that was the most precious. Time meant lives lost. Time meant more harvesters to kill.
No, the reason it didn’t matter wasn’t for any of that. It was because the
In the upper right was a sticky note. “Thought you’d want to see this,” was written in Howard Morgan’s neat script.
“How the devil did you get this?” She wondered aloud as she opened it to the first page and began to read.
She soon wished she hadn’t. The ten pages of blunt prose and charts predicted the collapse of the modern world in less than two months. Even if humanity stopped the harvesters much sooner, the report stated, so much damage had already been done to the world’s largest food producing regions that widespread famine on a global scale was inevitable.
And all of it stemmed from the one bag of New Horizons seed that we couldn’t find , she thought bitterly.
She threw the document across the room, startling the cats.
Someone knocked on the door.
“What is it?”
“Naomi? Are you okay, hon?” It was Renee
“I’m fine,” she lied. “Come on in.”
Renee opened the door and stepped inside. “Listen, we just got confirmation that the Norwegian command post where Jack’s hanging out is fine,” Renee said. “The problem wasn’t EMP, it was some End-of-the-World idiots blowing up a comms center at NATO Headquarters. I wish we could come up with a genetic weapon to make the harvesters just eat morons, but I suppose there wouldn’t be many of us left. Come on, get your skinny ass up.”
Naomi tried to smile.
Renee came to stand beside the bed and put her hands on her hips. “Look at you. You’re white as a sheet and those rings under your eyes are worse than Carl’s. Keep this up and you’ll wind up as bald as he is, too. What would Jack think? He’ll probably dump you so he can shack up with me, and you can have Carl the Sourpuss. You’ll be two bald peas in a pod.”
Unable to help herself, Naomi giggled. “Renee, shut up.”
“I’ll shut up the day hell freezes over, and probably not even then. Now get your ass out of bed. One of your queries hit on something, and Harmony is going to pee her pants with excitement if you don’t get down there this instant.”
***
With a heavy sigh, Howard Morgan sat back in the black leather executive chair in his corner office on the second floor of the lab building. He turned away from the computer to look out the windows. It had never been much of a view, as the facility had been located in the middle of a rather desolate spot in the expanse of Nebraska’s farm country, and it hadn’t changed for the better as his facility had been transformed from a cutting edge genetics laboratory to a heavily defended fortress. What he saw now more closely resembled the pictures he’d seen of firebases in Afghanistan. He was trying to enjoy the sight while he could, as the Army engineers planned to cover up the few remaining glass windows with sheet metal.
He turned around to look again at the report summary on the computer screen. All the labs were on line and functioning, an accomplishment about which he would have felt extremely proud had it really mattered. It wasn’t that all the people in the sixteen labs weren’t working as hard as they could. They were, and they had accomplished miracles, like completing the map of the harvester genome. It wasn’t a question of the intelligence or resources of the people working for him, for he had the brightest people in the country, arguably on the planet, with all the resources the United States Government could provide. More than he could actually put to good use, in fact. He had been told to waste anything but time, for time was the one commodity that was the most precious. Time meant lives lost. Time meant more harvesters to kill.
No, the reason it didn’t matter wasn’t for any of that. It was because the
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