The door burst open and a second sec man entered the room. "Put it down!" he said.
"But she cut me."
A third sec man entered the room. Krysty recognized him as the sec chief named Grundwold. "Did she reach into your pants and pull it out for you, too?" the sec chief demanded.
"He was going to hurt me," Krysty said. "Mebbe even chill me. I was only defending myself."
The sec chief looked at his two sec men with contempt. "Get out of here, before the baron hears about this." He pushed the bleeding man in the direction of the door.
"But—"
"Never mind," Grundwold said. "Or mebbe you want to explain to the baron what just happened here."
The two sec men left without another word. Once outside the room, the injured one grunted and groaned his way down the hall.
Grundwold stopped in the doorway before he left the room. "You try and relax, mebbe get some sleep. The baron wants you looking your best."
"That's kind of him."
The sec chief nodded and left the room, closing the door behind him.
Krysty fished under the bed for the knife. She wiped off the blood and slipped it into her boot.
Who knew? Mebbe it would come in handy.
RYAN WAS HAVING troubles of his own. Although he was doing his best to do the job that was required of him and be as inconspicuous as possible while doing it, the addition of a new slave was bound to attract attention.
"Are you spoken for?" asked an older woman with scraggly brown hair. She was obviously several months' pregnant and wasn't too concerned about concealing the fact, or she would have felt the need to cover her bloated breasts, which rested on her distended belly like eggs in a frying pan.
"Yes, I am," Ryan said, taking a bite out of a fresh peach.
"Who?" the woman wanted to know. "You just arrived. How could you—?"
"You can't rut with him," a second woman said. She was younger by about ten years, rake thin and without child. "That's not your choice to make. You're already heavy."
"But I want him," the pregnant one said. "He's strong and handsome. Maybe even a little mysterious."
"But if the baron catches you rutting without permission while you're already heavy, he'll chain you up until you birth."
"Who's going to know? Who'll tell the baron? You?"
The younger woman just smiled.
"Why, you bitch," said the older one. She threw her fist forward and caught the other woman flush in the nose. Blood began to drain from one of the younger woman's nostrils, but that wasn't stopping the older woman from trying to hit her again.
The young woman dropped to the ground and took the older one's legs out from under her with a spinning leg trip. The older woman fell on her rear, and her enlarged breasts seemed to bounce and jiggle for the longest time. The younger woman was about to give her a hard kick in the abdomen when another slave came by to break up the fight.
"That's enough, both of you!" he shouted, giving the smaller woman a stiff kick in the legs.
"Hey," Ryan called out, jumping down from the tree.
"You stay out of this, One-eye."
He gave each of the women another kick in the legs, and they finally stopped clawing at each other.
Ryan wasn't impressed.
He was a big man, well muscled with a body covered with scars, including several around his neck. There were leathery stripes of healed over flesh down and across his back, likely the result of dozens, maybe even hundreds of lashes inflicted by sec men over the years. He had short cropped hair and a full beard, and in many ways he reminded Ryan a bit of Major Gregori Zimyanin, which gave Ryan all the more reason to stop the man from beating the two women.
"Your next kick will be your last," Ryan said calmly, his fists clenched by his side.
The big man ignored Ryan's comment and pulled the two women apart.
The women were done fighting, but still eyed each other warily.
"Beth," he said to the older woman, "you know you can't rut until you've birthed the child. If you need to rut, it can be arranged. I could even see to it personally." He helped her off the ground and sent her on her way.
Then he turned to the other woman. "And I swear, if you had hurt Beth's offspring in any way, you wouldn't have been rutting with anybody, not the one-eye, and not anybody for a long, long time."
"But I wanted him tonight, Andy," she said, looking up at Ryan with something like fire in her eyes.
"There'll be plenty of time to rut with the one-eyed dog later," Andy said. "He's not going anywhere."
The young woman still didn't seem satisfied, but she stomped off without further protest.
When she was gone, Andy turned to face Ryan. "This is my work detail, One-eye. I keep the peace here any way I see fit, including giving breeders a kick when they got it coming."
"What are the sec men for?"
"To make sure no one tries to escape. As long as our group makes our quotas, they don't give a shit what goes on between us."
Ryan stepped forward, halving the distance between them. "Including when one of you gets chilled?"
Without warning, Andy threw a punch at Ryan's head. He dodged the blow and struck Andy's head with his left elbow. There was a definite crack of bone on impact, and Andy fell to the ground, dazed and unable to get up.
Ryan broke a branch off a nearby tree and was about to run the jagged edge of it through Andy's ribs, when a sec man fired a round at Ryan. The bullet zinged past the one-eyed man's head and slammed into the peach tree behind him, sending splinters in every direction.
"Leave him alone!" a sec man shouted as he walked over to where Ryan stood over the prone Andy. "Get back to work!"
Ryan tossed aside the branch and stepped away from the still groaning Andy.
The sec man helped Andy to his feet, and although the big man didn't say anything, the look in his eyes told Ryan that it wasn't over between them.
Only beginning.
Chapter Fifteen
"What's your name?" J.B. asked the young woman Jak had brought out of the weeds.
"Clarissa," she answered.
She was probably in her early twenties and had dirty blond hair that was all in a tangle. Her clothes were pretty worn-out, with large tears in both her T-shirt and pants. And although dirty, her skin was clean of any signs of rad sickness. She looked pretty much like a norm, but one could never tell in the Deathlands.
"Why were you throwing rocks at us?"
"It wasn't just me throwing rocks," she stated. "There were muties out there, too, you know."
"All right, then, why were you and the muties throwing rocks?"
"To get your food."
"But we don't have any food," Dean said.
"You've got more than we have, and that's enough. We watched you eat and wanted some of your food."
"And you were going to get it by throwing rocks?"
"I thought we could scare you off. You know, force you to leave a few crumbs behind."
"With rocks?"
Clarissa shrugged. "We're hungry. We'll try anything to get some food."
"We?" J.B. asked.
"Me and the muties."
"You're with the muties."
"Always."
J.B. just looked at her, trying to figure out the woman. She didn't seem afraid or even worried about what the friends might do to her. And she was definitely a norm, but instead of living with other norms she seemed to be living with, maybe even leading the muties.
Very strange.
"I wonder if you and your mutie friends might still be hungry?" Doc asked.
"We're always hungry."
"Well, perhaps we can make a trade."
J.B. wasn't sure what Doc had in mind, but he seemed to have a plan.
"Trade for what?" She eyed him suspiciously.
"For some information."
"About?"
"The area around here. And about Fox Farm."
"Sure," she said. "What have you got
to trade?"
Doc smiled. "This bag of fruit."
Without a word, Clarissa took the bag from Doc and began pitching peaches, pears and apples into the nearby weeds. The muties there began to feed. She took a few of the fruits for herself, turned back to face Doc and J.B. and said, "Ask away."
J.B. moved in closer. "Three of our friends went missing last night, and we found a sec man from Fox Farm dead in one of the rooms of the hotel we were Staying in."
"Are your missing friends women?" "Two of them are."
Clarissa nodded. "They took the women for breeding. Not sure why they'd take a man, though. They've got more of them than they need on the farm."
"For breeding? I don't understand."
"Fox Farm grows food. Best around for miles— hell, it's the only food around for miles. See, Baron Fox knows all about electricity, so he came out here a few years ago with the idea of using the power from the falls to start his own little barony. With the electricity he was able to rework the soil and bring in freshwater from the bottom of the lake. But the more he grows on the farm, the less there seems to be for anyone on the outside. The land here's good for growing, but any time we've tried to plant something the weeds grow so fast everything gets choked off. That's why the baron has so many slaves working for him. They spend most of their time pulling weeds."
"Slaves?" Dean repeated.
"Sure, that's why there's an electric fence all the way around the farm. It keeps animals and muties out of the orchards, but it doesn't let anyone out, either."
"We thought as much about the fence," J.B. said, nodding.
"Uh, excuse me, dear lady," Doc interjected. "But you mentioned something about breeding."
She took another bite of an apple, eating slowly now that she'd eaten a few fruits and had sated some of her hunger. "One of the reasons they grow a lot of fruit is for trade. They supply a few big eastern villes with fresh produce, so the farm is well stocked with everything like linen and soap, sugar and clothes."
"Blasters?" J.B. asked.
Clarissa laughed. "All kinds. Maybe a few grens— I can't be sure since I don't know a lot about weapons. There's a lot of them, though, I know that."
"What about the breeding?" Doc repeated, looking a little frustrated.
"Well, the other reason they grow so much food is to feed the slaves. See, they all work hard pulling weeds and picking fruit, and at night they rut. All night, every night."
"What does she mean by rut?" Dean asked.
"Rut," Doc answered, "is a vulgar term meaning to have sexual relations, especially intercourse."
"That's right, rut," Clarissa said. "Baron Fox trades in fruit and vegetables, but he also trades in slaves and babies."
"Babies?" Dean seemed confused.
"Since everyone is rutting every night, the women are getting heavy all the time. And since most of the offspring are norms, they are worth a lot to couples in the eastern villes who can't have kids of their own because of rad sickness or whatever."
"So that's how he's been able to become so rich," J.B. concluded.
"An offspring a few months old can net him a new blaster. Ten or twelve of them is good enough for a wag in perfect running order. He's got convoys heading east every month or so. Last few months he's been shipping every other week. There's even couples that have heard about the operation and make the trip to the falls just to see him. He usually gets their wag, so the smart ones bring two."
J.B. thought about Mildred. "What happens to women on the farm who don't want to rut?"
"They all do eventually. The baron doesn't care if you want to or not, and I think he even likes it when the women put up a fight. The ones who resist usually get beaten for starters. Then the baron will deny them food and water for days, and contact with all other people for months…just about anything a person needs to survive. Most of the women succumb, some don't, but even the holdouts get heavy in the end. They wind up chained to a wall in the baron's dungeon where they are force-bred until they're made heavy.
"But even when you get heavy, the punishment isn't over. Willing breeders don't rut when they're heavy if they don't want to, but the ones who resist can be rutted by anyone—sec men usually—right up until they birth. It's no wonder that after they've delivered an offspring, the women are only too happy and willing to rut like the rest of them."
Everyone was silent for several moments.
"It would seem to me that we must try to rescue Ryan, Krysty and Mildred as soon as possible," Doc pondered, "or our friends won't be the same when they come out."
"My thoughts exactly," J.B. said.
"I have question," Jak stated.
"What is it?" Clarissa asked.
"If baron takes women, why you here?"
It was a good question. All four of the friends looked to Clarissa for an answer.
"I was inside," she stated.
J.B. looked at her skeptically.
"About a year ago my family was part of a wag convoy heading east to a new ville my uncle was starting up in Roads Island. But when we came through here, Baron Fox's men captured my family and brought us all to the farm. My mom didn't last long. She put up a bit of a fight, but since she was old and couldn't get heavy anymore, she was sent to the sec men's lounge for the stupe bastard's entertainment. She didn't last long there, and died just a few weeks after we were captured."
Clarissa paused to let out a sigh and take another bite of her apple.
"My dad was an older man and found the orchards hard work. When he learned about what had happened to my mother, he went mad and attacked a group of sec men with a stick. They chilled him before he could strike a single blow. After that, I knew I couldn't stay on the farm, so I tried to escape. It took me three tries, but I finally did it by dressing up in a sec man's uniform, stealing a wag and driving it through the front gate. I've been living on the outside for about eight months now."
"Why stay here?" Jak asked. "Not go away?"
Clarissa looked sad. "My sister's still inside. She resisted the baron a lot more than I did, and she ended up in the dungeon. She was heavy when I got out, and she might be ready to birth in a few weeks. After I escaped, I wanted to leave, to get as far away as I could, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Knowing I'm on the outside waiting for her is probably the only thing that's keeping her alive in there."
"Try save her?"
Clarissa shook her head. "No, what could I do by myself?"
"What about the muties?" Doc asked.
"They wouldn't be much help in an attack. Throwing rocks and tearing things apart with their teeth is about all they're good for. If I could get them inside the complex, they might do some damage, but I can't get them past the fence."
"That's not what I meant," J.B. said. "They let you live with them without them hurting you?"
"Yes."
"And even now, they aren't attacking us."
"That's because I don't want them to. You see, I feed them whatever I can spare." She threw the cores of her apples and pears off into the bushes. "They consider me a sort of savior." She threw back her head and ran her fingers through her dirty blond hair. "There isn't anything they wouldn't do for me."
"Do you think if you told them to attack the farm, they'd do it for you?" J.B. asked.
"Attack the farm?"
"We're not leaving our friends inside," J.B. stated.
"But that would be crazy. There's only four of you, and that place is like a fortress."
"That, my dear girl," Doc piped up, "is why we can use all the help we can get. Mutie or otherwise."
"You could help us, too." J.B. leaned in closer to her. "You know your way around the farm and could lead us to where we want to go."
Clarissa said nothing but looked to each of the friends in turn.
"We could get your sister out along with our friends," J.B. suggested.
"You four are serious, aren't you?"
"I have been a part of this group a long time, young la
dy," Doc announced, "and I can assure you beyond a shadow of a doubt that we take such matters very seriously."
"Okay, but even if I help you and convince the muties to come along for the ride, you're still going to need more weapons to break in to the place, and to breakout."
"Some heavier blasters would be nice," J.B. said.
"A few grens would be useful in causing diversions too," Doc mused.
"More ammo," Jak said.
"And a wag," Dean added.
"Yes, and a wag," J.B. echoed.
"If you had some of those things, you really think you could free my sister and your friends."
"Other slaves, too," Jak muttered.
"Okay." She nodded, as if she'd just taken a step from which there was no turning back. "I know a place where we can find some of the things you need."
Chapter Sixteen
The crew broke for lunch, which was served in the orchard off the back of a rebuilt electric wag that had burners and coolers and all sorts of things to help prepare food and keep it hot or cold as required. Ryan was given the choice of vegetable soup or some sort of meat stew. He decided on the soup, since he knew that the vegetables were grown on the farm but he couldn't be sure where the meat for the stew had come from.
The man in the greasy clothes behind the food counter spooned out the soup into Ryan's oversize mug, then put a large bread roll on the tray beside it. Farther along, an overripe tomato was put on his tray and finally an empty glass, which could be filled up with water from one of the spouts that extended off the end of the wag.
Ryan filled the glass, drank and then filled it a second time. He turned to find Mildred. She was sitting in the shade under one of the peach trees, eating the stew. Ryan joined her.
"How's the food?" he asked.
"Had better. Had worse," she answered.
"How's your back?" Ryan leaned backward to ease the pain in his lower back. He was in terrific physical shape, and his muscles were as taut as iron bands, but nothing could have prepared him for hours of being hunched over and looking for weeds. He'd get used to the work eventually, but he wasn't planning on being there long enough for that.
Axler, James - Deathlands 61 - Skydark Spawn Page 10