The Harvesting Read online

  The Harvesting

  Melanie Karsak

  The Harvesting

  Published by Steampunk Press at Smashwords

  Cover art by Michael Hall Photography

  Copyright © 2012 Melanie Karsak

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed are fictional. Any resemblances to the living or the undead are purely coincidental.

  This book is available in print at most online retailers.

  .

  Dedication

  For Erhan

  Without you, I’ll never survive the zombie apocalypse

  .

  Acknowledgements

  With special thanks to Michael Hall, Susan Houts at Local Celebrity Public Relations Agency, José Otero, Naomi Clewett, and Catherine Amick

  Chapter 1

  “If you ever need to slice someone’s head off, this is the blade you want,” I said as I lifted a curved sword off the table in front of me. “We’ve been practicing épée and foil so far, but tonight I want to introduce you to the sabre.” The practice sabre’s curved blade reflected the orange streetlight shining in through the window. A grant from the Smithsonian where I worked allowed me to teach my two passions: ancient weapons and their arts. “The sabre is a slashing weapon,” I continued and then lunged, showing the wide-eyed and excited students a few moves. “And in general, it’s my favorite,” I admitted with a grin.

  The students laughed.

  “Is that why you have it tattooed on your arm?” Tyler, one of my best fencers, asked.

  My hand went unconsciously toward the tattoo. The ink was a sword interlaced with other once-meaningful symbols. “That’s not just any sabre,” I said, mildly embarrassed. “Here, let me show you. I brought something special tonight.” Setting the training sabre down, I lifted a rolled bundle. I laid it down on the table and unrolled it to reveal weapons in various elaborate scabbards.

  “Some are épée, foils—you can tell by the hilt—a broadsword, a claymore, a katana, a scimitar, throwing daggers,” I said, pointing, “but this, this is a Russian shashka.” I pulled the shashka from the bundle. “It’s like a traditional sabre, but has no guard. She’s light, single-edged, wielded with one hand, and good for stabbing or slashing. Not awkward in close quarters like a Scottish claymore, but it will kill you just as dead,” I said with a smile. I unsheathed the weapon and gave it an under- and over-hand spin around my head, shoulders, and back.

  The students grinned from ear to ear.

  I put it back in its scabbard and handed the shashka to them. “Pass it around, but keep in mind it is sharp enough to cut a blade of hair in half.” I then turned my attention to Tyler. “Now, since you’re so interested, let’s see how you do with the sabre.” I tossed one of the training swords to him.

  Tyler, already in his gear, jumped up and lowered his fencing mask. “But you’re not in gear,” he said.

  I shrugged. “Hit me--if you can.’”

  We stood at the ready, made the ceremonial bow, and began. Tyler was not overly aggressive, which is partially why he was so successful. He waited for me, moving slowly. He was smart, quick, and often tried to over-tire his opponent.

  I waited, dropped my sword a bit, and let him make the lunge. He took the bait.

  The swords clanged together, and we clashed back and forth across the strip. He lunged and slashed while I dodged and blocked. He was fast. I was faster. When he lunged again, I ducked. With an upward movement, I went in.

  “A hit,” Kasey called.

  They clapped.

  “Man, that’s what you get for taking on a former state champ—and the teacher,” Trey told Tyler with a laugh.

  Tyler pulled off the mask and smiled at me.

  Just then, my cell rang. I would usually ignore it, but something told me to answer.

  “Everyone pair up and start working with the training sabres,” I said and pointed to the sword rack. I went to my bag and grabbed my cell.

  Before I could say hello, she spoke.

  “Layla, Grandma needs you to come home,” my grandmother’s voice, thick with Russian accent, came across through static. I was silent for a moment. My grandmother lived 500 miles away, and she never used her telephone. With the exception of her T.V., she hated technology. She’d cried and begged me to take away the microwave I’d purchased for her one Mother’s Day.

  “Grandma? What’s wrong?”

  “Come home now. Be here tomorrow,” she said. She hung up.

  I lowered my cell and stared at it. Confused and worried, I dialed her back. The phone rang, but she did not answer. I had obligations: practice, bills to pay, groceries to buy, tons of work to do, and a date for god-sakes. But my grandmother was the only one I had left in the world.

  “Sorry, guys. Emergency,” I called to my students.

  Disappointed, they groaned.

  “Sorry. Let’s pack it up for the night.” My hands shaking, I slid the shashka back into the bundle and rolled up the weapons. What had happened? Maybe Grandma was sick. Maybe she had some problem. Or maybe she had seen something.

  The monuments on the Mall faded into the distance behind me as I made my way to my Georgetown apartment. It was Friday night. Wisconsin Avenue was packed. The upscale shops and restaurants teemed with people. In the crowd you could see the mix of international tourists, Georgetown students, and designer-dressed hotties headed to clubs. I sighed. For the last month I had turned myself inside out trying to get the attention of Lars Burmeister, the German specialist the Smithsonian had brought in to consult on our new medieval poleaxe exhibit. He had finally asked me to dinner; we were going to meet at Levantes, a Turkish restaurant near Dupont Circle, at nine that night. I had dreamed of authentic dolma and a chance to sit across from Lars somewhere other than a museum. I had even bought a new dress: black, strapless, come-hither.

  I circled my block three times before I finally found a parking space. Regardless, I loved Georgetown. It was early fall. The mature trees had turned shades of deep red and orange and were losing their leaves. The air was filled with an interesting mixture of smells: the natural decay of autumn, dusty heat from the old cobblestone streets, and the mildly rancid odor of too many people. In my 4th floor attic apartment of an old Brownstone, I could occasionally catch the sweet scent of the Potomac River. It reminded me just enough of home.

  The apartment was ghastly hot. The small, one-bedroom had been closed up all day. I lifted the window and let the noise of the city fill the room. The street lamps cast twinkling light across my apartment. The weapons I had mounted on the wall, swords, shields, axes and the like, glimmered. I peeled off my sweaty practice clothes. Pulling a bag from the closet, I threw in several changes of clothes and a few other supplies. On my coffee table, my laptop light blinked glaringly. An overflowing email inbox, an article on bucklers that needed editing for a peer-reviewed journal, and a PowerPoint on Medieval Russian swords for a presentation for next week’s symposium all called me. My coffee table was stacked with paper. I was flooded with work; half my department was out on sick leave. There was a bad flu was going around. Thankfully, I had not yet gotten sick.

  I pulled my cell out of my bag. I stared at the phone for a moment; Grandma’s recent call was still displayed on the screen. I dialed Lars’ number. My stomach shook when he answered.

  “Guten abend, Lars. It’s Layla.”

  “Ahh, Layla, good evening,” he replied.

  I loved his German accent. He’d learned English from a British teacher; he said arse with a German lilt. It made me smile. I could tell by his tone he was trying to hide his excitement. I didn’t let him get far. I told
him I had been called away for an emergency. I could sense his disappointment.

  “I’ll be back by Monday. Let me make it up to you. Dinner at my place Monday night?”

  He agreed.

  “Gute nacht,” I said as sweetly as possible, hoping I had not pissed him off, and stuffed my phone into my bag. I stared out the window taking in the view. I did not want to go back, not even for a weekend. I loved my life. Hamletville was an old, ghost-filled place: too many memories, too much heartache. Yet I knew my grandmother. If she said I needed to come home, then I needed to come home.

  I closed the windows, slid on a pair of jeans, a black t-shirt, boots, and a light vest. I looked again at the display on the wall. At the center I had crossed two Russian poyasni or boot-daggers. One dagger had the head of a wolf on the hilt. The other had the head of a doe. I grabbed them and tossed them in my bag. I then headed back downstairs and into the night. It was the last time I would lay eyes on D.C. for many years.

  Chapter 2

  Hamletville. My grandmother had travelled from the Mother Country all alone. When she arrived in New York, she got on a westbound train and stayed on until “the spirits told me to get out at Hamletville, so I got out.” She’d purchased as much land as her money could buy: 100 acres backed up to a National Forest. She said she felt safe there. While her profession was a seamstress, her true talent was as a Medium. And according to the children of Hamletville, she was also a witch.

  My grandma, however, had done her best to raise me. When my mother ran off with the town drunk—and who knows who my father was—my grandmother had not batted an eyelash. She moved me into the Fox Hollow Road cabin and took care of me. My mother never came back.

  I was sleepless, smelled like Doritos, and had drunk far too much bad coffee, but almost eight hours later my SUV rolled into the small town of Hamletville where I’d grown up. It was like reliving a bad nightmare. Memories of an only occasionally happy childhood and even worse youth lived on every corner. When I drove past his shop, my heart still hurt—even four years later. I strained my neck to try to catch a glimpse of him but saw nothing.

  My Range Rover easily took the bumps, turns, holes, and trenches of Fox Hollow Road. Guilt overwhelmed me when I arrived. It had been almost a year since I’d been back. My grandmother’s lawn had not been mowed in ages; weeds were knee high. Some shingles had come off the roof, and the place looked even more like a witches’ cabin than ever. My grandmother had closed all the shutters on the house and had nailed boards across most of them. Despite the fact the sun had just risen, my grandmother was there, hammer in hand, working on barring up the front picture window. She was wearing a purple checked dress, and her hair was covered in an old yellow and blue flowered babushka. When she saw me, she came off the porch and waived my SUV forward.

  My first thought was that she was not well. Last year my assistant’s mother had entered early stages of dementia and started displaying odd behavior. Perhaps my grandmother . . .

  “No, no, Layla, Grandma is fine. Come. Help me now,” she said, interrupting my thoughts as she opened the door to my SUV. “Oh, Layla, you need a shower.”

  “Of course I do, Grandma. I just drove across four states to get here.”

  “Ehhh,” she muttered and then led me into the house.

  The scene was one of complete disarray. It looked like she had unloaded every cupboard and was sorting items.

  “Tomorrow the men come to fix the roof and clean the chimney. Already I’ve had wood delivered, but Layla, I had the men put it in the dining room. I know, everyone thinks Grandma is crazy.”

  “Well, Grandma, it is a dining room.” I noticed that the old oak China cabinet had been pushed in front of the living room picture window. It was now blocking most of the light.

  “Grandma . . .” I began, but I was not sure what to say.

  “Here, Layla, I want you to go to store. Buy all the things on my list. No questions. Just buy it all,” she said and then handed me a wad of hundred dollar bills. I looked from the money to the list to her and back to the list again. “No questions,” she said, “but take a shower first. You stink.”

  “Grandma.”

  “I’ll get you a towel.”

  My grandmother’s bathroom, decorated with red-trimmed white towels and smelling like lemons, was a stark contrast to the rest of the house. So confused by the scene, I didn’t know what to do. Like the obedient girl I’d always been, I did what she told me. As the water poured over me, I tried to make sense of what was going on. All I knew was every hair on the back of my neck had risen and there seemed to be an odd buzzing in my ears, like the feeling of being near something high-voltage. I tried to shake it but couldn’t. My grandmother’s seriousness made me want to obey her, but too much life and education made me want to stop in my tracks.

  When I came out of the shower my grandmother was nowhere to be found. She’d left me a clean towel and a note written in Russian: “Went to woods. Will be back. You go to the store.”

  I went to my room to unpack. It was full of boxes. Inside I found cases of antibiotics, bandages, and other medical equipment. I dressed quickly and went onto the front porch. From that vantage point, I noticed that Grandma had recently installed a very tall chain-link fence around the house. I was so tired when I’d arrived I hadn’t notice it. The gate stood ajar. Grandma must have left it open when she went on her walk. Things were getting weirder by the moment.

  “Grandma?” I called into the forest behind her house, but there was no reply. I decided to head to town and shop as she’d asked.

  It was a Saturday morning, and the streets of the sleepy town were a-typically quiet. I pulled into the parking lot of “Hicktown Hardware and Huntin’ Goods.” At least the owners, the Lewis family, had a sense of humor. I made a silent prayer to God that I would not run into anyone I knew. No luck.

  “Ah, Layla, are you here to pick up Grandma Petrovich’s order?” the owner, Mrs. Lewis, asked as she snubbed out her cigarette. The air around the cash register was hazy blue. I had not seen Mrs. Lewis in almost five years, but she still looked exactly the same: tightly permed brown hair, overly thick smoke stained glasses, and blazing pink fingernail polish. She had been glued to a small T.V. sitting beside the cash register. I could hear the over-expressive voices of excited newscasters.

  I nodded. “She added a few more things,” I said and read off the list which included more batteries than one person could need in a lifetime, two-way radios, three axes, and high-powered binoculars.

  Mrs. Lewis instructed a shop boy to gather the items on my list. I paid cash, nearly $1200, for all of the items, including the pre-order which was packed into mystery boxes.

  At the grocery store I was met with a similar pre-order.

  “Have to admit,” Clark said as he helped me load my SUV, “I was surprised to hear your Grandma on the phone. She is almost a recluse. I think Father Ritchie checks in on her from time to time, but otherwise she doesn’t come out much anymore. What is she doing with all this stuff anyway?”

  Something inside me told me to lie. “We’re going on a trip out west. You know how these old people are. She wanted to make sure we had enough.”

  “You gonna rent an RV or something?”

  “Yeah, that’s the plan.”

  “Whoa, what are these?” Clark asked as he stumbled across the swords and fencing gear I had left in the back.

  “Swords, actually. Well, I should be getting back,” I said, looking down at Grandma’s list. Clark waved goodbye, and I slid back into my SUV. The first two stops on the list were not difficult, but the next two puzzled me.

  She left instructions for me to stop by “Campbell Feed and Lumber.” She knew very well that was the last place I would go. She wanted fifty pound sacks of corn and wheat flour. I looked up the street toward the shop. I waited. After a few moments Ian appeared on the loading dock outside the store. He lowered two large bags onto the back of a flatbed pickup. He laughed as he talked to the
driver. I could almost see that funny wrinkle he gets in the corner of his mouth when he smiles. He waved goodbye to his customer and turned to go back inside but then stopped. He looked up the street, his eyes settling on my SUV. He took two steps down the loading platform toward me.

  “Oh my god,” I whispered.

  A moment later, Kristie, his wife, appeared at the shop door and called him back inside. He turned, casting one last look my way, and then went in.

  “Bitch,” I whispered and turned the ignition over in my car and headed up Lakeview Drive toward the Catholic Church.

  My grandmother was not a religious person. Whenever she was invited to go to church, she would decline, saying “no, no, no, I am Russian Orthodox,” and the conversation would end. Privately, however, I had never seen my grandma act in any way that was remotely Christian. In fact, some of her odd “old country” practices often had a pagan flavor.

  When I got to the Catholic Church the doors were open. I stopped when I entered, taking a moment to smooth my hair, checking my reflection in a mirror hanging on the wall just by the door. I was glad Grandma had made me take a shower. I pushed my thick black hair into a ponytail. The church candlelight made my green eyes sparkle.

  “Can I help you?” a voice asked.

  I turned to see Father Ritchie standing there. It had been years since I’d last seen him. He used to coach the boys high school basketball team. He looked so much older. “Father, I am Layla Petrovich. My grandmother asked me to come see you,” I replied.

  “Ah yes, Layla. How is your grandmother?” He was quick to hide his confusion. I could almost hear him thinking: what is she doing here?

  “I’m not sure, Father. But, regardless, my grandmother asked me to come and request holy water.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “To be honest, I don’t know. My grandmother has her ways, and most of the time I just do as she wants.”