Liar's Harvest (The Emergent Earth) Read Free Page A

when I was a teenager.” A tiny smile broke through his anger. “We didn’t get shit most trips. The only times I got lucky in these woods was in the cemetery with a blanket and a bottle of whatever was cheapest at the corner store.”
    “In a graveyard at night? I can’t believe you talked any girls into coming out here to have sex with you on top of a bunch of dead people.”
    “It sounds better if you say under the stars instead of on top of dead people.”
    “Still gross.”
    “When you live with your folks, it’s all about the privacy. And the booze.”
    We chatted and walked for about twenty minutes. Leon refused to let anyone help him with his wheelchair, so by the time we arrived, he was sweating with the effort despite the chill in the air.
    The Needham-Hawley graveyard was over a hundred years old, and sprawled over five acres of land. The gates were long gone, but the rusty remains of a waist-high cast iron fence could still be seen stretching around the perimeter in bits and pieces.
    Leon stopped at the entrance. “What. The. Fuck.”
    The entire graveyard was covered in gaping holes, fresh dirt, and the shattered pieces of rotten, age-blackened caskets.

5

    E ven after all these years, it felt weird walking into a place like this without my squad at my side. I could almost hear Shad suggesting that we throw a bunch of grenades in first, just to see what would happen, and Two-Penny telling him to shut up.
    I motioned for the others to hang back and stepped into the graveyard. If there was something dangerous in here, I wanted it to go for me first.
    My baton scraped against its holster when I drew it, the sound like a shout to my ears in the still air. The weapon itself was dull silver and slightly thicker than a broom handle, with a small crossbar sticking out of the side. It was warm to the touch. My worst enemy had given it to me right before he tried to get me to kill him with it. Its name was Hunger.
    The ground was hard and weedy where undisturbed, but near every grave was a deep hole surrounded by a halo of fresh earth. Many of them had fragments and splinters of wood trailing out of their depths, and more often than not, ragged strips of cloth. There were no body parts, just the remains of clothes and coffins.
    I walked up to the nearest hole and peered in, revealing a short shaft that angled down into the side of the casket proper. A musty but not unpleasant smell reached me as I bent low to inspect the deep claw marks in the soil that made up the walls of the shaft.
    I walked further in, trailed by the others. Near the center of the graveyard I heard a faint scratching sound, so I looked back and held one finger to my lips.
    Anne’s Fobus combat holster clicked softly as she thumbed the release and drew her weapon in one smooth motion. It was a Sig Sauer P250 compact tactical pistol, configured for 9mm.
    On the way to Henry’s place a few weeks ago, we had stopped by her apartment so that she could pack a few bags. The first thing that she had put her hand on was the P250.
    Chuck drew his battered Taurus, and Leon reached into his side mounted holster for the new Heckler & Koch HK45 that he had purchased to replace his service pistol, returned when he got the medical discharge from the Marines. I guess the 9mm hadn’t seemed manly enough. I would have felt ridiculous standing next to all those guns holding a tonfa if it weren’t for the fact that Hunger was a hell of a lot more deadly.
    As we approached, the scratching noise stopped, leaving only the sound of our breathing. Leon leaned forward in his chair with his head cocked and rolled himself forward very slowly, the wheels of his chair rising and falling over each bump and clod of dirt in his path. A stick cracked.
    The grave in front of us exploded. Dirt flew in all directions as something the size of a Great Dane burst from the dark hole. Slick white skin, thin and smooth like a frog’s, covered bunched and corded muscles at haunch