Black Harvest

by James Axler

Ryan shook his head. “Are you?”

  Krysty was silent, searching her feelings for any hint that they were in danger. “Nothing.”

  “Then I’m just being cautious. If we’re going to play this game, then we might as well play to win and take as much ammo with us when we leave as we can.”

  “Go hard, or go home,” J.B. barked.

  “You think we might lose?” There was surprise in Krysty’s voice.

  Ryan shook his head. “Not a chance.”

  ELEANDER SLIPPED a coat over Doc’s shoulders and smoothed out the creases in the fabric.

  Doc took a moment to feel the crispness of the garment and run his fingers up and down the sleeve. “It is so clean.”

  “Has to be,” Eleander said. “The baron’s operation wouldn’t work if things got dirty. He’s developed chemicals and cleaners that make things white. I hope it’s all right.”

  “It is fine.”

  She led him inside a large white room that was filled with all sorts of beakers, burners and vats. Two other people were in the room dressed in lab coats, busily moving trays from one part of the room to another.

  “This is where we make insulin for a person with diabetes,” Eleander explained. “We used to make it from the pancreases of dogs, but that was very expensive and we went through a lot of dogs just to make a little bit of it. Then he realized that with so many muties dying in and around the ville, why not make it from human pancreases. It makes for a better insulin and we make more of it, and more cheaply.”

  “That’s…” Doc searched for the word. He wanted to say disgusting, but that was just an initial knee-jerk type of reaction. The baron was actually showing himself to be quite resourceful. Perhaps even a genius. “That’s amazing,” he said at last.

  Eleander shrugged. “The baron’s ancestors were all great whitecoats. And he has access to some pretty big pre-Dark books. He says that if he has the raw material, he can make any medicine that the pre-Dark whitecoats could. That’s why he spends so much time in his garden growing different things.”

  “But how many diabetics are there to trade with?” From what Doc knew about the disease it was unlikely that anyone born with a severe case of it in the Deathlands would survive very long, just as it had been with diabetes during his time. That would leave type-two diabetics who contracted the disease later in life. If they survived, and had the jack to pay for the insulin, it was possible they’d be able to survive, lucky to be alive.

  “Just one. There is a baron in an East Coast ville that has the disease. All of this production is for him. We make shipments each couple of months.”

  “And he pays?”

  Eleander let out a little laugh. “Of course he pays. If he doesn’t have it, he’ll die.”

  Drugs, Doc thought. There was always someone desperate enough to pay the price, no matter what the cost.

  She showed Doc around the room, explaining how the insulin was made and stored. She also let him feel and touch the equipment as much as he wanted.

  Doc pointed his swordstick at a door at one end of the room. “Is there another laboratory in there?”

  “You can’t go in there!” Eleander exclaimed.

  Doc was speechless. Such outbursts were uncharacteristic of the woman.

  “Is it secret?”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, it is.”

  “Say no more,” Doc said, raising his hand. “I have been around my share of secret laboratories to know that if you don’t want me to know what’s in there, then I probably don’t want to know, either.”

  Eleander seemed relieved.

  “Just tell me one thing. Is it possible that the thing on the other side of that door could harm people, people such as my friends and I?”

  “No, what’s in there doesn’t hurt. It only makes a person feel good.”

  BY MIDDAY the group traveling with the messenger were nearing DeMannville. The trip had taken twice as long as it should have, slowed by Baron Schini’s insistence on making the trip a leisurely drive between villes.

  A couple of times the messenger had thought about revving the engine of his wag and shooting off across country and leaving the baron in a pile of dust, but every time he turned, Sec man Slade had the Gewehr 43 pointed at his back. The damn blaster never wavered. If he did try to run, he’d be lucky to make it ten or twenty yards before his back would be torn to shreds.

  A quarter mile outside the ville, the messenger stopped and let Baron Schini’s wag catch up.

  “I’ll go on ahead,” the messenger said, “and inform the baron of your arrival so he can properly greet you when you enter the ville.”

  Baron Schini smiled and slowly shook her head.

  “That was a good try, but I think we’ll all enter the ville together. DeMann doesn’t have exclusive rights to the grief this man Ryan has caused our families, and I’ve got just as big an interest in his execution as anyone.”

  The messenger nodded, started up his wag and led the baron the rest of the way to the ville.

  At the gate, the messenger was stopped by the two sec men on duty.

  “What’s that bitch doing here?” the smaller one said, spitting into the dirt to show his contempt.

  “She wants to see the baron.”

  “Well, the baron don’t want to see her,” the second sec man said. He held his longblaster in one hand, the butt of it resting against his right hip.

  The messenger sighed and nodded in agreement. “The baron won’t, but Sec chief Robards will.”

  The two sec men at the gate suddenly became more interested in the visiting baron.

  “Get the chief,” the second sec man said.

  The smaller one turned to enter through the small door to the left of the gate, but was stopped by Robards, who was standing in the doorway and had been listening to the exchange on the other side of the gate.

  The chief was uninterested in the presence of Baron Schini, and wanted only to talk to his messenger. “Well,” he grunted. “Is he the one?”

  “Yes, Chief. He did the baron’s son, too.”

  Robards smiled demonically. “Let her in, then,” he said.

  The two sec men looked at each other in confusion—it was no secret that Robards hated Baron Schini—but they opened the gate as they were told.

  Moments later, Baron Schini entered the ville, the procession of wags looking very much like a triumphant motorcade entering a newly conquered ville.

  Chapter Eleven

  “So, you’re sure it’s him?” Robards asked.

  The messenger nodded. “The journal was pretty clear on the matter. The outlander that killed the baron’s brother was named Ryan Cawdor.”

  “Anything about his eye?”

  “Only that his right eye is blue.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” the sec chief said. “And I think it will be good enough for the baron, too. Good job.”

  “What about Baron Schini?”

  “Right. I suppose she wants to be the one to chill the outlander.”

  “She might, but so far she’s said she only wants to be there to see him suffer.”

  The sec chief was silent for several moments, as if thinking. “Sure, we can do that for her.”

  “Got a plan, Chief?”

  “The outlanders will be competing against some of our men in the arena this afternoon. Make sure Baron Schini has a place of honor for the contest next to our own baron. She might prove to be a useful scapegoat if something bad should happen to the baron.”

  The messenger laughed.

  “Now, let’s not keep the visiting baron waiting.” They left the sec chief’s office and went outside, where they met with Baron Schini and her two sec men.

  “Baron,” Robards greeted her with a gracious nod. He offered his hand to shake, but she ignored the gesture.

  “I was expecting Baron DeMann, but it’s about time somebody came to greet me.”

  Robards smiled. “We’re busy getting ready for a contest in the arena
this afternoon.”

  “A contest? Who’s challenging?”

  “My best men, and the outlanders.”

  Schini’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “Including the bastard who chilled my son?”

  “The very one.”

  “Mmmm, I’ll enjoy watching him die.”

  “Perhaps, but these outlanders happen to be very good at staying alive and chilling their enemies.”

  The baron grew angry. “You don’t have to tell me that. They wouldn’t have been able to chill my dear sweet Luca if they weren’t.”

  Robards paused. Luca Schini had been little more than sewer scum, which is why he’d been a sec man for someone like Baron Zeal and not his own mother. Still, the baron’s anger was an asset. He’d be able to use it against the one-eyed outlander as well as Baron DeMann.

  “Luca was an excellent sec man,” Robards lauded. “I would have been proud to have him in my service.”

  “Cut the crap, Robards, and take me to see Baron DeMann. I’m sure we’ll have plenty to talk about.”

  “Of course.” Robards smiled. “This way.”

  LESS THAN TWO MILES from DeMannville, Sec chief Viviani turned the wag train off the main, weed-choked road and led them into the woods far enough so that the brush and trees would keep them all hidden from view.

  When all the wags had stopped and the air was filled with the ticking sound of cooling engines, he called out the names of his two best sec men. “Sherman and Roy!”

  Two young men appeared at his side.

  “I want you to head the rest of the way to DeMannville on foot.”

  The two sec men nodded. “Yes, Chief.”

  “If anything happens in the ville I should know about, one of you delivers the message back to me while the other remains back watching the ville. If Baron Schini gives the signal, then you both return and join us for the invasion.”

  The sec men remained still and silent, waiting to be dismissed.

  “Depending on how fast you can travel on foot, we should be slipping in through the gate and into the ville no more than twelve minutes after the baron’s signal.”

  “How about ten minutes?” Sherman said.

  Viviani nodded. “All right, ten.”

  Sherman and Roy headed off through the trees in the direction of DeMannville. Their footsteps could be heard for a minute before they faded into silence.

  “What about the rest of us, Chief?” someone asked.

  The sec chief pulled a partially smoked cheroot from a pocket on his sleeve and lit it with a butane lighter.

  “We wait,” he said, puffing on the cheroot.

  ROBARDS CALLED Katz into his office.

  Katz seemed frightened when he entered. Being called in to the sec chief’s office was never a good thing. “You wanted to see me, Chief?”

  “Ah, there you are.”

  “I do something wrong?”

  “No, not at all.”

  Katz let out a sigh.

  “I wanted to see you because I’ve got a little job I want you to do for me.”

  BARON DEMANN WAS busy working in his garden.

  In the past six months he had been trying to grow a hardier variety of poppy, or papaver somniferum as it was called in one of his books. While he’d had little trouble making opium from the plants, the unripened seeds contained several alkaloids including morphine, a very powerful painkiller, and codeine, a milder painkiller, but still very effective. The poppies he’d been growing up until now had produced few seeds, or else dried up before coming to term, and as a result he could only make opium and a small amount of morphine from the crop. However, each of the last few generations of poppy plants had done better than the one before, and it looked as if the current set of plants were close to being right for the production of morphine and codeine on a large scale. If he was able to produce more of those drugs as well as the ones he’d been making for years, he might be able to sell in villes farther down the East Coast. There were a few in Virginia that were wide open and ready for his wares.

  “Excuse me, Baron DeMann.”

  It was the voice of his sec chief.

  The baron, on his hands and knees between the rows of plants, looked up. “I’m busy, what is it?”

  “Baron Schini is here to see you.”

  “What the fuck does that bitch want?”

  Robards inhaled a deep breath. “Do you remember when the outlanders arrived, I told you there was something about them I needed to check out?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, I sent a rider to Indyville to look through the journals Baron Schini has in her library there.”

  The baron rose off his knees and was now standing between the plants and wiping the dirt from his hands. “And?”

  “I sent him there to check on the death of your brother—”

  “He died at Spearpoint, a stupid sec man with more balls than brains.”

  “I know that, Baron. What I was checking on was the identity of the man who chilled him.”

  “It was an outlander working for the Trader who fought back when that asshole Zeal tried to rip him off.”

  “That’s the general story, yes, but I wanted to check to see if there were anything in the journals about the deaths of your brother and Baron Schini’s son.”

  The baron looked at his sec chief with an intense gaze. “And now she’s here. What did you find out?”

  “Well, I’d remembered hearing people talk about Spearpoint being leveled by Trader and his men. The Trader had plenty of men working for him, but one of them had just a single eye.”

  “One eye?”

  Robards nodded.

  “And you think our guest, Ryan, is the same man?”

  “The one that chilled your brother, and the baron’s son.”

  DeMann said nothing for the longest time. “So this one-eyed bastard has been staying in my ville, enjoying my hospitality, eating my food, fucking in the bed I provided for him, and all the time he’s the one who chilled my brother.”

  The sec chief nodded.

  “That takes some balls.”

  “The biggest.”

  “And that’s good work.” The baron slapped his sec chief on the back. “How did you remember?”

  Robards shrugged. “I just recalled hearing stories about a one-eyed man. When he showed up outside our ville, I figured it was worth checking out.”

  In truth, Robards had once been Sec man Robards on Baron Zeal’s sec force at Spearpoint. He’d remembered seeing a one-eyed man in the Trader’s party and knew he was responsible for the deaths of a lot of Zeal’s men. It had been a long shot that Baron Schini’s journals made mention of Spearpoint, but Robards had decided long before he’d sent a messenger that he would tell his baron that the outlander named Ryan had chilled the baron’s brother. It was just the sort of diversion the sec chief needed to chill the baron and start devoting all of the ville’s resources to making a lot more of the jack-making drugs like jolt, dreem and bang.

  DeMann clenched his fists, turning the knuckles white and stretching the skin taut over his fingers. “None of those outlanders leave here alive.”

  “Of course not, Baron.”

  “I want them all chained up in the hot box where I can watch them die slowly, and in great pain.”

  “I remind you that Baron Schini is here to watch the outlander die. If you chill him slowly, it means she may remain here for a week or more.”

  “Right.” The baron nodded. “Then a .38 round through the forehead for the one-eyed bastard, or maybe one through his good eye so he can see it coming. But that’s only after I put one in his foot, in his kneecap, both hands and shoulders… The rest of them get one behind the ear.”

  “That’s good, but…”

  “But what?”

  “I’ve got another idea. Perhaps it’s even a better one.”

  “What is it?”

  Robards told him.

  It brought a smile to the baron’s face.

  J
AK WAS ALONE in his room.

  At his insistence, Mildred had gone to meet with Ryan and the others to talk about the challenge they’d have in the arena in the afternoon. She said she’d be back in a few minutes, but she’d already been gone for quite a while now.

  It somehow sounded wrong to Jak—blasters that didn’t chill. The only reason anyone used a blaster was to chill and to be able to point a blaster at someone, squeeze the trigger and know that person wouldn’t die, wouldn’t even be hurt, wasn’t right. If you used a blaster that didn’t chill, then you could get careless with it, using it when you didn’t have to, or hesitating when your life was in danger.

  Every time Jak held a blaster to someone’s head, the only reason he did it was to blow the person’s head apart. Not to scare them, not to hurt them, but to chill them. If he just wanted to hurt someone, he could always use his knives. With his assortment of leaf-bladed throwing knives, Jak could cut someone, chill someone, even poison the blades so they died days later. Knives could do all those things, but blasters…blasters were meant for chilling.

  But, as crazy as he thought this contest was, at least after they’d won it, they’d be on their way with all the ammo they could carry. Jak was down to less than a dozen rounds for his .357 Colt Python, and in a firefight twelve rounds wouldn’t last more than a few minutes. It would be good to feel the heavy tug of ammo pulling on his pockets and belt, but it would be even better to be gone from this place. Even though they’d been well treated and well fed here—and Mildred had been able to fix him up with the help of some of their medicines—Jak didn’t like the place. There seemed to be little order in this ville—so many people doing whatever they pleased and chaos seemed to erupt too often without warning. It was like paradise one moment, a hellhole the next, and you could never be sure which one it was going to be or for how long.

  As far as Jak was concerned, it would be good to be out in the Deathlands again.

  The sooner the better.

  Just then the door to his room opened and the whitecoat named Katz entered. He had a small metal box with him, the outside of it a shiny chromed steel that reminded Jak of the chromed guns he’d seen people carry in some of the eastern villes. Flashy, clean, but nothing anybody who knew anything about blasters would use.