The Harvesting (11 page)

Around mid-October Fred noticed that
Tander Vineyard and Orchard looked ready to bust at its seams. A
popular spot for passing tourists, the Tander Orchard usually
offered fruit picking, a pumpkin patch, and hay rides this time of
year. Fred Johnson had checked the Tander house but the family was
nowhere to be found. We all decided to head out one morning and
collect the harvest. Ethel had arranged to show us all how to do
canning and had a workshop set up in the gym. We had begun to
function like an authentic village.

Jamie and Fred drove tractors with
attached wagons to the farm that morning. Jamie had convinced a
reluctant Frenchie to bring the girls. It took some doing. They
almost never left the cabin. I didn’t blame Frenchie. If they were
my children, I would have stayed put as well.

I rode with Jamie, Frenchie, and the
girls in the wagon. The girls were very excited. It was a chilly
fall morning. The first freeze had not yet come, but it was close.
The scene looked almost like a tail-gate party. There were about
two dozen people there, most of them armed. Empty bushel baskets
sat on the ground.

Ian and Tom approached us when we
arrived.

“
Swept the entire place.
Looks clear,” Ian said.

“
We’ve got armed folks all
around the farm keeping an eye out,” Tom added.

“
I want a pumpkin,” Kira
squealed.

“
Me too,” Susan
called.

“
Let’s go,” Tom said. He
picked Kira up and swung her onto his shoulders.

Frenchie, hand in hand with Susan,
smiled at me and followed Tom.

I grinned at her.

April, Summer, Ethel, Jensen, and
Larry pulled up in Larry’s van.

Ethel emerged with a large box. “Until
I figure out how to bake in a fire pit, this will have to do,” she
said. “I used Mrs. Winchester’s recipe for homemade granola. Got it
a bit burnt I’m afraid, and I think I used up the last raisins on
the planet,” she said and started handing out small bags to all of
us.

Jamie took a bag and kissed Ethel on
the cheek. “You’re an angel,” he said.

Ethel pinched his cheek. “Honey,
that’s you. How come you never got married? Summer, why don’t you
go with Jamie?”

Summer looked like she wanted to sink
into the ground. “Good lord, mother, the apocalypse is here and
you’re still trying to fix me up.”

Everyone chuckled.

“
Oh, there’s Frenchie and
her girls. I have something special for them. Let’s go,” Ethel
said, pulling Summer behind her. Summer shook her head and rolled
her eyes as she passed me.

“
Tom’s got people working
the vines and the pumpkins. A few people are in the back cherry
orchard. We still need people to pick apples. I thought we could
work up here,” Ian told Jamie, April, and me.

We all picked up some baskets and
headed into the orchard. Ian, his gun slung over his shoulder, kept
watch. It was a beautiful morning. The sky was clear. The hardwood
trees had lost most of their leaves. The remaining foliage, now
drab brown, rust, and deep red in color, was about to drop. The
apple trees were thick with fruit. The fallen apples filled the air
with the tangy smell of decayed fruit. Yellow jackets buzzed the
apples.

April was working in the tree next to
mine. I could hear her and Ian chatting. I wondered what kind of
relationship they’d developed over the last four years. April and
Kristie had always been very close.

I filled the first basket of apples
and headed back to the wagon with my load. The bushel was
surprisingly heavy. Jamie was on his way back to the orchard when
he intercepted me.

“
Here, let me take that
for you,” he said, taking the bushel from my hands.

“
Got to help the little
lady, huh?”

He laughed, “I’m sure you can handle
it. I’m just being gentlemanly. Didn’t you hear Ethel? I’m a great
catch.”

I looked up at Jamie. I’d never
noticed before how different his eyes were from Ian’s. I knew they
both had blue eyes, but Jamie’s eyes were a deeper shade, the blue
intermixed with flecks of green and gold. I smiled at him. “I
thought you were dating that girl from Sparkstown.”

Jamie shrugged. “That ended a couple
of years ago. She was nothing special.”

“
Well, you’ll be
hard-pressed now,” I said.

“
Hard-pressed for
what?”

“
To find something
special.”

Jamie lowered the apple bushel into
the wagon. He looked at me and gave me a very awkward smile. “I
don’t know about that.”

Just then a truck pulled into the
farm, music blaring loudly. Jeff.

“
Hey man, you want every
undead asshole left in the county following you here? Turn it
down,” Jamie told him as he approached Jeff’s truck
window.

Jeff got out of the truck carrying an
oversized CD player. He put it on his shoulder; “Just like the 80s,
right?” he said and danced his way to the back of his truck. He
dropped the tailgate. There he had stashed three large coolers.
Within, bottles of beer swam in cold lake water. “Want one?” he
asked.

Jamie shook his head.

“
It’s a bit early,” I
said.

“
Well, considering I might
die tomorrow, I’m not really watching the clock,” he replied as he
cracked open a bottle.

“
But you can get to work,”
I said, handing an empty basket to him, “if you want to
eat.”

“
Thought I might try a
liquid diet,” he said, lifting the bottle and looking at it in the
sunlight. “Just kidding, Layla. I’ll get going in a minute,” he
said and took the basket from me.

I’d gone back to the wagon to grab
another basket when Tom returned.

“
Jamie, can you take the
tractor back to the field? They are ready to load the gourds and
pumpkins.”

Ian joined us.

“
Sure,” Jamie said with a
nod. The old tractor kicked on with a lurch. With a wave, Jamie
pulled away.

I grabbed a ladder and headed back to
finish the top of the tree I was working on. I waved to April. She
was hoisting the long fruit picker, a kind of clawed basket at the
end of a long pole, into the top of a tree near mine. She smiled,
half-tolerantly, at me.

I popped open the ladder and climbed
up. As I got half-way up, two things became apparent. I needed to
use the shoulder sling to collect the apples and my sword and
holster were in the way. I climbed back down, hung my scabbard
strap on the top of the ladder and swung the holster from a bottom
limb. Donning the shoulder sling, I climbed back up the ladder and
started loading apples into the satchel. I paused to eat a perfect
looking fruit. Its skin was mostly green but was blushed at the
edges with red. The sweet and tart juices filled my
mouth.

In the distance I could see Jeff and
Ian sitting on Jeff’s tail-gate. They were both drinking. Jeff had
turned the music back on. It wasn’t loud, but I could hear the beat
of the rock music from where I was perched.

I had half-filled the satchel when I
could no longer reach the apples from my ladder. Grabbing a thick
branch, I pulled myself up into the tree. Once I was perched near
the top, I took a break to stretch my back. The sun was high in the
sky now; I was starting to sweat. The bugs were becoming
particularly annoying. I stopped, pulled the small canteen off my
belt, and took a long drink. I looked for April to offer her some
water when I saw someone standing very near my tree. I could not
make out the person well through the leaves, but every hair on the
back of my neck rose. The person stood there saying nothing. They
just stood. I knew then who—or what—it was.

It had not yet seen me. I cursed
myself in every language I knew. My guns and my sword were all out
of reach. I slowly pulled my feet up and slid the poyasni from my
boots.

“
Ouch. Dammit. God-damned
yellow jackets,” April cursed.

The figure under me moved. Then I saw
three others. They all closed in on her.

“
April, watch out!” I
screamed.

The one who had stood under my tree
turned then and came back. He jogged around the bottom of my tree
trying to catch sight of me. He was joined a moment later by
another undead man. They both swung at me, trying to pull me from
the tree.

April screamed and tried to run,
swinging the apple picker at the undead men who tried to grab
her.

“
Ian!” I screamed at the
top of my lungs. “Ian, help!”

Larry and Jensen had just got back to
the truck. They were setting their bushels down.

“
Ian!” I screamed louder.
“Larry!”

The undead men bumped against the
ladder knocking it and my weapons on the ground.

“
Layla, help,” April
screamed. She was trying to climb into the tree but they were
grabbing at her.

I swung down, trying to strike one of
the undead with a dagger. They were out of range, and my position
was too awkward. I could neither throw nor strike. I considered
jumping out of the tree but landing would be clumsy and slow. I was
about to try anyway when April let out a blood curdling
cry.

The men looked up. “Ian, help!!” I
screamed again, waving at him. He saw me then. Dropping everything,
the men took off in a sprint, weapons drawn.

Through the leaves I saw April had
been pulled to the ground. She was screaming but still kicking and
fighting.

Moments later there was gunfire. The
undead figures hovering over April fell to the ground. I heard
April crying and moaning.

They shot the two undead under my
tree. As soon as they hit the ground I clambered out of the tree,
grabbed my weapons, and ran to April.

We were too late. One of her sneakers
had been torn off and her foot was badly wounded. She had been
bitten. Her leg was bleeding profusely.

“
Someone get Jamie,” I
said as I pulled on a pair of medical gloves.

Jensen took off in a
sprint.

I cursed myself for my carelessness,
cursed myself because April had no hope. I slid the gloves on and
taking my knife, cut away April’s jeans. A nasty bite wound was
revealed.

“
Oh no, no, no,” April
moaned.

Ian took April’s hand.

My hands shook. Larry pulled off his
belt and handed it to me. I wrapped the belt around April’s leg and
pulled it tight. She moaned.

Jensen and Jamie came running up. “God
dammit, Ian. I told you to keep an eye on . . . them,” he cursed
and dropped to his knees. “Go get everyone rounded up and sweep
this place again,” he told his brother angrily as he pulled on his
gloves.

Ian rose and walked off.

“
Music probably attracted
them,” I said quietly as Jamie looked April over.

He nodded, but I could see he was
angry. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“
Yeah.”

“
Ohh, oh God, oh no,”
April groaned.

I handed Jamie my canteen, and he
poured water over April’s foot and leg. It washed the blood away.
We could see then that the blood around the bite marks on her skin
had already started to coagulate. The veins in her legs seemed to
turn dark blue and color started to fade from the skin and travel
up her leg. We watched, horrified. From the bite on her foot up her
leg, the skin slowly lost its pigment. Her skin faded pale white as
the diseased blood traveled up her body. Moments later she went
silent. She stiffened for a moment and then jerked spasmodically as
the infection climbed across her face. Her skin bleached white, the
veins in her forehead darkening. She jerked several more times and
then became still. She was moon white. Her veins, evident under her
flesh, were dark blue. Her eyes had fluttered closed.

How
different
. I heard April’s voice in my
head. Again she repeated:
how
different
.

I looked around. Clearly, no one else
had heard her. Jensen, Jeff, and Larry were looking down at April.
Jamie and I rose. We all stared down at April’s body. She lay in
tall green grass. Purple violets made a halo around her. No one
breathed.

We heard a gunshot in the distance
followed by two more.

A moment later, April sat up. She
opened her eyes and looked at us. Her eyes had gone pale white with
the now-familiar streaks of red. Frothy saliva began to drop from
the corner of her mouth.

Jensen raised his gun.

April turned to look at
him.

No
, I heard like a whisper in the wind.

Jensen pulled the trigger. April fell
back, a spray of blood and brains covered the grass.

Ian ran back up to us. “There were two
more out there. It was the Tanders and their boys. Maybe two farm
workers. Looks like the place is clear now,” he said. He looked
down at April.

I watched the expression on his face
change. It was as if he’d just realized what had happened. It
occurred to me then how careless Ian was with other people’s lives.
I looked away from him.