by James Axler
“Sure is curious,” Mildred acknowledged. “Maybe even a bit strange.”
“Lots strange about ville,” Jak said through slightly clenched teeth.
J.B. was just about to comment when the wag crested a rise and the ville suddenly appeared before them.
It was a fair-sized ville in two distinct parts. On the edges were all manner of run-down and ramshackle dwellings, and several areas made up of tents. Ryan recognized a few of the structures as gaudy houses and canteens, and guessed that the rest were flophouses and shelters for the ville’s bottom-feeders. Past the outlying ghetto was a section of the ville that was fenced in by a wall of burned-out wags, piles of broken cinder blocks and bricks, and rusty and twisted steel girders. If there had once been a city on this spot, its remains had been pushed, pulled and dragged into a mile-long circle of eight-foot-high rubble. The front gate of the ville was a ten- or twelve-foot gap in the wall, which was closed off by a pair of thick wooden doors that swung freely on two massive hinged wooden posts. Most likely they served as telephone poles in pre-Dark days.
A lookout in a crow’s nest set atop the pole on the right acknowledged the driver of the wag as it approached, and the doors swung open slowly to let the vehicle inside the ville.
As the gap between the doors inched wider, Ryan studied the buildings inside the wall. Like the structures on the outside, most of the buildings inside looked slapped together, with a few looking as if they’d been made from the cargo containers. Windows had been cut into the sides of the big square boxes to make living quarters, while others had been fitted with pipes and exhausts that suggested to Ryan that the ville’s baron was more of a manufacturer than a trader. In the distance, toward the back of the ville, Ryan could make out large glass houses similar to the kind once used on pre-Dark farms. So, in addition to making items for trade, the ville grew its own food. That would explain the well-maintained wag and a well-armed and organized sec force.
There were obviously things worth protecting inside the walls.
The wag pulled up in front of a stack of square steel boxes, each set on top of another like bricks. The door to the wag opened and one of the sec men got out, followed by Eleander and Moira. Doc and the others got up to exit the wag along with the women, but Robards put up a hand to stop them. “They get off here,” he said. “You’re going somewhere else.”
The friends sat down.
Robards stepped off the wag and spoke with one of his sec men. When he was done, the sec man double-timed it down the road. Then the sec boss got back on the wag and it lurched forward as it slowly got back underway.
Jak let out a slight groan of pain as the wag was jostled by a bump in the road, then quickly said, “Not hurt.”
“Yeah, I bet,” Mildred responded.
The wag pulled up in front of another series of stacked steel boxes and Robards turned and pointed to Jak. “This is where he gets off. There are people inside who can help him. They know he’s coming.”
Jak got up from his seat.
Mildred stood up as well.
“Are you injured, too?” Robards asked Mildred.
“No, but I’m going with him,” Mildred said.
Robards seemed to consider it a moment.
“She has some experience as a healer,” Ryan said at last. “Especially with blaster wounds.”
Robards nodded, a bit reluctantly, and stepped off the wag. He led Jak and Mildred inside one of the stacked steel boxes and the rest of the friends waited several minutes for him to return.
“Think Jak will be all right?” J.B. asked.
“Be back good as new with Mildred looking after him,” Ryan answered.
“Knowing Master Lauren as I do, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he had several women fussing over him by nightfall, each one offering him their virtue more passionately than the one before.”
Ryan smiled at that.
The door to the steel box opened and Robards returned to the wag. “He’s in good hands now.”
Again the wag lurched as it began to move.
On the left side of the roadway, Ryan noticed a strange sort of paddock area. It was basically an empty space with old oil cans, concrete barricades and several fences serving no apparent purpose scattered across the grounds. It looked like an obstacle course, and Ryan thought it might be used to train the baron’s sec force.
On one side of the paddock was a high and wide concrete wall that had been pockmarked by blasterfire. Ryan had seen such walls before and knew that they were used mostly for executions. That would explain the darkest stains on the wall, but there were other stains—bright yellows and oranges, and even a few of them green—on the wall and all over the enclosure that defied explanation.
“What do you make of that?” Ryan asked J.B.
“Firing squad?”
“Mebbe, but who bleeds green?”
The wag began to slow as it approached a brick-and-stucco building that towered three stories over the rest of the surrounding structures. There were plenty of blown-out windows, and large cracks in the walls that ran from the top all the way down to its foundation. The building had obviously survived the shock wave from a big blast miles away that had wiped out the rest of the ville. But while the building was still standing, it looked as if one more good bang would bring the whole thing crashing down. At least that’s the way it looked from the outside. But despite the damage, the building was by far in the best condition of any inside the ville, and it was obviously the place where the baron lived. However, judging by the size of it, there had to be plenty of others who lived inside as well.
“Last stop,” Robards announced.
“The baron lives here,” Ryan said.
“Yes, and so will you for the next few days.”
The muscles along Ryan’s back tensed at the words. “You make it sound like we’re prisoners.”
“Not at all,” Robards said. “That’s merely the usual duration of the baron’s hospitality. He grows tired of guests who don’t capture his interest, but I have a feeling your group will be allowed to stay for as long as you like.”
“When will we meet the baron?” Doc asked.
“He’s tied up with a business matter at the moment, but he’s assured me that he will be attending a small reception being held in your honor prior to this evening’s dinner.”
“A reception?” Doc quipped. “And I left my formal dinner jacket at home.”
Krysty let out a slight laugh.
“Don’t worry, Doc,” J.B. said. “The food will taste the same.”
“This way,” Robards said, leading them into the building.
THE INTERIOR of the steel box was hot and smelled of rust and urine, feces and blood. The sunlight shining in through the open door forced the man chained to one of the walls to squint to protect his eyes.
Baron DeMann, dressed in an immaculately clean lab coat, entered the steel box and pinched the end of his nose to fight off the stench. “I thought you said this stinkhole was hosed down.”
“Done last night,” the sec man on the baron’s left said.
“I want it clean just before I enter, understand?”
None of the sec men answered him.
Then one of the men said, “Mebbe he emptied his bowels this morning when we told him you’d be visiting.”
The rest of the sec men laughed, but the baron wasn’t impressed.
The laughter quickly died.
Baron DeMann stopped several feet from where the prisoner was chained up by his arms. They’d hoisted him up onto the wall just high enough so that his feet were off the floor, and his arms had to carry all his body weight. After a few days in that position, his arms had stretched enough for him to get his toes onto the floor, relieving some of the load on his arms, but not the pain.
The baron looked at the man’s feet touching the floor of the box. “Crank him up another six inches,” he ordered.
Two sec men turned a winch handle that reeled in several links
of chain, lifting the prisoner higher up on the wall.
The man screamed in pain, but even in the echo-filled steel box, the cry sounded weak and feeble.
Beaten.
“Now, you little rad-blasted bag of scum,” the baron began, “have you had the chance to think about what you did?”
“Been thinking a lot…” the prisoner gasped.
“Yeah, about what?”
The prisoner’s head shifted to the right, and he opened his eyes against the invading sunlight. His dry, cracked lips parted, and his tongue appeared over his bottom lip like that of a lizard. He tried to spit at the baron, but his mouth and throat were too dry to produce any moisture.
The baron just shook his head. “You’ve got a bad attitude, Des.”
“Fuck you!”
The baron sighed. “And that disappoints me,” he continued, as if the prisoner wasn’t even there, “because I like you. Anyone who thinks they can get away with skimming jack off the top of my operation has either got the biggest pair of prunes in the entire ville, or he’s the stupidest rad-blasted fuck alive.”
The prisoner, Des, turned his head to the side, as if he’d heard the baron’s spiel before.
“I know you’re not stupid, because if you were, that would make me stupid for putting you into a position to rip me off. That means you’ve got to have Grade A plums in that scrotal sack of yours, and I like that.”
Des said nothing.
“I like that, but it’s not exactly a good thing for you to have. See, if by now you had told me you were sorry, I would have had to think about forgiving you. And if I’d forgiven you, then mebbe you’d already be dead, instead of hanging around inside this steel box waiting for me to let you die. But since you still haven’t come around to being sorry for what you’ve done, I’ve gotta make an example of you so no other sec men get any bright ideas about trying to cut themselves a piece of my pie.”
Des tried to spit again, but all that came out of his mouth was dry air that hissed as it passed through his lips.
“I guess that means you haven’t changed your mind.”
“Fuck you, you ass…” The man’s words trailed off without being completed.
“You really want to live, huh? Hang in there as long as you can?” Baron DeMann laughed at that.
The sec men surrounding him laughed as well.
“Well, I’m gonna make sure you hang in a long, long time, asswipe.” He turned to the sec man on his right. “Bring it here.”
The sec man moved forward, carrying a clear plastic bag filled with a clear liquid. There was a pale white rubber hose coming out of one end of the bag and a needle connected to the end of the hose. “This will keep you hydrated, Des. It’ll be like you’re drinking, but you’ll never have the pleasure of feeling the water sliding down your throat.”
The baron moved forward, climbed up onto a step provided for him by a sec man, then jabbed the needle into a vein in the prisoner’s arm.
“No.” The word escaped the man like a sigh. There was fear in his voice. Real terror.
“Oh, yeah. I’m going to keep you alive as long as I can, just to hear you scream.” The baron moved in close to Des so there were just inches between their faces. “And when I get tired of that music, I’m going to add some junk to the bag, stuff I’m experimenting with that will eat away at your brain until there’s nothing left but goo.” He paused, savoring the moment. “Finally, when it’s more work than it’s worth to keep you around, I’m going to put a few crazed muties in this box with you and watch.”
“No!” Des screamed loudly.
“Ah, that got your attention, eh?” the baron said, climbing off the step. “Good. Think about those muties crawling all over your body, looking for junk.”
“No, no. I’m sorry…sorr-ee,” Des screamed, his voice echoing eerily off the walls of the box.
But the baron wasn’t listening anymore. He had turned his back on the prisoner and was on his way out of the box, followed by a half-dozen sec men.
When they were all outside, the sec men closed the steel doors in silence, all of them listening to the screams of a man who had just started down a very long and painful road toward his own death.
It gave them all something to think about, especially since Des used to be a sec man, just like them.
AT THE OTHER END of the ville, a door opened on a large steel box. From somewhere inside the box came a gnawing, high-pitched mechanical whine that rose in pitch, and then suddenly settled down into a staccato hum.
People outside the box turned to look in the direction of the sound.
And then all at once the sound lost its reverberation as a man atop a motorized, two-wheeled wag suddenly burst from the opening. The wag’s engine whined as the vehicle sent a plume of dirt and dust into the air behind it.
The gate to the ville opened slowly, and for a moment it appeared as if the man on the wag would crash into it, but by the time he reached the gate there was just enough space for him to slip through the opening.
The wag’s small engine rose in pitch again, screaming like an instrument of terror now as it raced toward the western horizon.
In seconds, the driver and wag were little more than a trail of dust in the distance.
The cry of the engine began to fade.
In minutes they were gone from view.
Chapter Four
Jak and Mildred were led down a long dark corridor that smelled—if Mildred remembered correctly—of disinfectant. That, of course, was impossible, since the manufacture of such things as disinfectant and household cleaners died with the nukecaust.
Still, she sniffed at the air and caught the unmistakable scent of pine.
“Smell good,” Jak said. “Clean.”
“I guess we won’t have to worry about conditions being sterile,” Mildred commented.
When they reached the end of the corridor, the sec man guiding them opened a door that led into a white room that was well lit by windows and portals cut into one of the walls.
“A healer has been sent for,” the sec man stated. “He should be here in a few ticks.”
Mildred nodded her thanks. She helped Jak up onto a wooden bed covered with linen and, when he was comfortable, she took a look around.
The room was small, but at first glance it appeared to be well stocked. Mildred made a closer inspection of the room and saw a variety of bottles and vials that were labeled with names of medicines and drugs she hadn’t seen, or even thought about in a long, long time.
There were bottles of cyanide, which she knew could be made from the seeds and pits of apricots, peaches, apples and wild cherries. Next to the cyanide were several vials of a whitish powder that Mildred guessed was arsenic trioxide. She turned one of the vials and read the label, proving herself right. Seeing the two poisons on the shelf gave Mildred a bad feeling, but further study revealed that this was a shelf storing nothing but poisons. There was another shelf in the room that appeared to be stocked with a variety of dried herbs that were often used for medicinal purposes.
She suddenly felt better about the setup.
The first one she picked up was dried echinacea, which was good taken internally against infections and externally for skin abrasions. Next to that were dried elder flowers, which were also good for skin ailments. Farther along were dried ginkgo leaves, good for a half dozen or so diseases, especially those to do with the mind. She continued down the shelf past Ginseng and Hops, Kava and Lemon Balm, St. John’s Wort and Valerian. These were all wonderful herbs and useful for the treatment of mild ailments, but none of them were strong enough to fight off an infection from a bullet wound.
Mildred looked for something stronger, and found it locked inside a cabinet in one corner. The doors to the cabinet were wooden framed panels of chicken wire. Just behind the wire she saw jars of dried hemp leaves, more commonly known during pre-Dark times as marijuana or cannabis, which could be used as a sedative or a postoperative painkiller. Next to the hemp
were containers full of poppy seeds, which were an essential ingredient in the production of opium, as well as painkillers such as morphine and codeine.
These were more of the types of medicine Jak would be needing.
Behind the poppy seeds, Mildred saw several bowls filled with large green and yellow fungi, some of them excreting a yellowish fluid from the ridges and folds of their surface. If Mildred remembered her botany and biology correctly, penicillin was basically an antibiotic compound taken from molds of the genus Penicillium. If she was right, and she was sure she was, then she was probably looking at the medicine’s raw material.
“Seeds and leaves,” Jak said, lying back on the bed, exhausted.
“They may just be seeds and leaves to you, Jak, but to someone who knows what they’re doing, they can be made into powerful drugs.”
“Jolt and dreem?”
Mildred shook her head. “There’s no sign of that, but if the baron knows how to make good drugs like penicillin, then he can probably make the bad ones, too.”
“Not want drugs,” Jak said.
Mildred came over to his side and opened up the pressure bandage she’d put over his wound. “I think that’s wise, Jak, but you might not have a choice in the matter.”
“Make sure safe.”
“Don’t worry, my young friend,” Mildred said, patting Jak on his good shoulder. “I’ll look after you.”
Just then, the door to the room opened and a tiny older man dressed in a clean lab coat came into the room, moving to Jak’s side quickly. He had a thick mustache and thinning black hair combed over his hairless pate. “What’s the problem?” he asked, almost sounding irritated.
“He has a flesh wound that needs some attention,” Mildred answered for Jak.
“Playing with knives, eh?”
Jak looked at the man for a moment and wondered if he knew something about Jak’s talent with throwing knives. “Mutie shot me,” Jak said.
“Is that so?” The man unlocked the doors to the cabinet, then opened up the chicken-wire doors. After a moment’s consideration, he took out several containers and began mixing items on a shiny steel square that sat on top of the counter. “Being stupe outside the wall, were you?”