Skydark Spawn

by James Axler

  A sec man opened a small door in the gate at chest height, and the goods were passed through the opening.

  “It’s been a pleasure,” the sec man said.

  Ryan nodded. J.B., Doc and Krysty each took a bag, but no one grabbed a fruit, knowing they should keep their hands as free as possible in case something went wrong and they had to grab their blasters.

  The small door closed and the deal was done.

  “How far is the ville from here?” Ryan asked.

  “Just down the road,” the sec man said, pointing south. “Hardly any people there, but plenty of places to spend the night.”

  “Thanks,” Ryan said.

  They were about to leave when J.B. stepped forward. “If you don’t mind me asking, where are you getting your electricity?”

  “No secret,” the sec man said. “Power station at the falls has been making juice for more than two hundred years.”

  “The falls,” Mildred said. “Niagara Falls?”

  “That’s them.”

  “Thanks for the trade,” Ryan said, “but we best get moving if we want to get to this ville by dark.”

  “Mebbe we’ll see you again sometime,” the sec man said.

  Ryan nodded. “Mebbe.”

  The friends headed for the falls, Mildred and Dean covering the rear until they were out of range of the sec men’s longblasters.

  Chapter Five

  When the outlanders were almost out of sight, Baron Fox came down from his office and strolled out to the main gate to meet with Grundwold.

  The sec chief had ordered the others in his team to continue trailing the outlanders while he made his report to the baron. He would catch up to them later.

  The baron arrived at the gate wearing his familiar silk bathrobe, but now had a heavy pair of black leather boots on his feet. He took a pipe from a pocket in his bathrobe, filled it with some of the tobacco grown on the farm and lit it with a shiny chrome Zippo lighter, which had cost him a breeder. As always, Norman Bauer was several paces behind the baron, his ledger tucked neatly up under his right arm.

  “The one-eyed man’s their leader,” Grundwold stated.

  Fox chugged a few times on his pipe. When it was lit, he clenched it between his teeth and said, “Yes, he seemed to do all the talking for the group.”

  “He’s good with a blaster, too,” Grundwold said.

  “As they all are, no doubt.”

  “It would make it hard for me to take them without losing a lot of my men.”

  Fox grew angry with the sec chief. The redheaded one was exotic, and her hair was the most beautiful he’d ever seen. Even if she never got heavy, he knew a rich baron or two living outside the eastern villes who’d pay big jack to make a wig or weave out of hair like that. And the dark woman had the best set of breeding hips he’d seen in months. “Sec men I can get anywhere,” Fox spit. “I need breeders.”

  “Yes, sir,” Grundwold barked. “What do you want me to do, then?”

  “I want you to bring them here,” Fox said, blowing a plume of gray smoke just under Grundwold’s nose. “Bring me the women…whatever it takes.”

  Grundwold nodded and looked down the road toward the falls. “What did you give them?” he asked.

  “Three bags of fruit in exchange for some trinkets.”

  “Ripe?”

  “Most of the fruit is laced with sedatives. We didn’t have time to prepare the fruit in all three bags, but there’s a good mix. Should be enough to put a few of them off guard,” Grundwold stated. “That’s all the advantage we’ll need.”

  “I’ll send the wag to the tower after dark.”

  Normally the sec chief would have a wag at his disposal, but a slave had recently stolen one in an escape and they hadn’t been able to trade for a replacement yet. That made the second wag even more valuable, and the baron only wanted to let it outside the complex long enough to collect the new breeders and bring them back to the farm.

  The sec chief nodded and said, “We’ll bring them back.” He started down the road at double-time to catch up with the rest of his men.

  “Of course you will,” Baron Fox said. “Of course you will.”

  “IT MAKES SENSE NOW,” Mildred said as the friends walked along the road toward the ville that was now less than a mile away. “The region around Niagara Falls was all farmland. Apple orchards, pears, plums, peaches and plenty of grapes for making some really good wine.”

  “No more,” Jak stated.

  “Not after the blast. The whole area was wiped out, except for that one farm.”

  “In my day,” Doc offered, “Niagara Falls was the site of some of the most exciting theoretical discussion about the possibilities of electricity. Not to mention the incredible feat of engineering that would be required to make it possible.”

  “Electricity would sure give the baron or whoever owns the farm one hell of an advantage,” J.B. commented.

  “Like fuel,” Jak said.

  “Better than fuel,” J.B. replied. “It’s harder to steal. No one can blow it up. And it doesn’t have to be refined. It could give them lights, even the power to pump fresh water.”

  “So why hasn’t the rest of the area prospered?” Ryan asked. “If there’s power here, why is the ville empty?”

  “After two hundred years the power station can’t be producing all that much electricity,” Krysty reasoned.

  “He probably takes everything the station produces,” J.B. stated. “Or destroyed all the power lines, except for those running to his farm.”

  “I must say the people working on the farm looked healthy enough,” Doc suggested. “They must all be doing well for themselves.”

  “And for other traders,” Jak said, lifting the bag of fruit.

  Ryan had to admit that the farm looked like a well-run operation. But there was still something about it that bothered him. The electrified fence was a logical defense system considering the type of muties that lurked in the area and the amount of electricity that was available. Still, it seemed to be run a little too smoothly for it to be just a farm, and he’d never seen a farm that was so well armed.

  “You know,” Mildred said, “there’s another thing that Niagara Falls was known for in predark times.”

  “What’s that?” J.B. asked.

  “It was the honeymoon capital of North America.”

  “What’s that mean?” Dean asked.

  “It means that after people got married, they’d come here to, uh, celebrate by spending a lot of time in bed together.”

  “Oh.”

  “So that’s why the sec man said there were plenty of places to spend the night here,” Krysty said.

  J.B. smiled. “Good. I could use a good night’s rest.”

  “Not up to a little honeymoon, John?” Mildred chided.

  “Oh, I’ll be up for it,” J.B. responded dryly.

  At that moment they crested a rise in the road and suddenly Falls ville and the lake beyond it stretched out before them. There were dozens of buildings around the ville that had been destroyed by the shock waves from the initial nuke blasts, or the aftershocks that followed. But despite the damage, there were still several structures intact, such as the one that looked like a saucer set upon a knife that overlooked the water, and a cluster of buildings huddled together in the center of the ville.

  The lake to the south was as big as an ocean, but was spotted by sandbars and dry patches along the shore. Water flowed over a horseshoe-shaped ridge, but it flowed only over two sections in the center of the horseshoe. The rest of the curve was dry and home to several large water birds.

  “The falls have almost run dry,” Mildred said. “In predark times you’d be able to hear the water roaring from here. Millions of gallons of fresh water every minute, day and night, 365 days a year.”

  “Now falls like rain,” Jak commented.

  “Producing enough electricity to operate one farm, but not enough for an entire ville,” J.B. said.

  “T
here’s something else I just realized,” Mildred said.

  “What is it?” Ryan asked.

  “If that’s Niagara Falls,” she said, taking a look at the geography around her, “then we’re on the Canadian side of what used to be the border.”

  Chapter Six

  “Being located in Canada would explain a lot about the construction of the gateway,” Ryan said.

  “Anyone using it would be looking to get out of the country in a hurry,” J.B. surmised. “So it probably served as an escape hatch, mebbe for military commanders or politicians.”

  “But there’s such a large underground system of redoubts and installations,” Krysty said. “Why would a one-way escape gateway be needed?”

  “Things go wrong,” J.B. suggested. “Even underground fortresses can be infiltrated, especially from the inside. That gateway could get someone out of one hot spot without the risk of them landing in another one.”

  Krysty considered J.B.’s reasoning. “So the trip through the gateway was meant to be one-way.”

  “Someone going through that gateway likely wasn’t welcome back in the United States, probably wouldn’t want to go back to it, either.”

  “All this talk of travel has made me rather famished,” Doc interjected. “Might it be possible to have one of those delectable fruits we are carrying?”

  Ryan took a good look around. He hadn’t seen a mutie for some time. Although he had noticed a few of the creatures following the friends earlier on, they had dropped away now that the ville was near. They had another half hour before they reached it, and the route looked like fairly easy going. They had time to snack now while they walked, but when they entered the ville, they would need to be on the alert. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to eat something now.”

  “I’ll have a peach, then,” Doc said, quickly pulling one of the fuzzy fruit from the bag he was carrying.

  “Me, too,” Dean said.

  Doc tossed Dean the peach he was about to eat, then pulled a second one from the bag for himself.

  “I’ve got apples and pears in this bag,” J.B. said.

  “Apricots and plums in mine,” Krysty added.

  “I’ll have a few of each,” Mildred said. “My father used to make the best plum sauce in three counties. We’d have it on pancakes every Sunday after church.”

  Krysty handed Mildred a handful of deep purple and golden-yellow fruits.

  “I’ll have a pear,” J.B. said. “How about you, Krysty, Ryan, Jak?”

  “Apple,” Jak said.

  “Pear for me,” Ryan said.

  Krysty smiled. “Me too.”

  “These look good,” J.B. said, handing a reddish-green pear to Ryan, and then to Krysty. “Mebbe I’ll have one, too.”

  J.B. fished a pear out of the bag for himself.

  “These are truly wonderful peaches,” Doc said, admiring the fruit in his hand. “Did I ever tell the story about the man I met who rode with Kit Carson when the red-eyed son of a bitch burned out the peach orchard in Canyon de Chelly?”

  “Yes,” Ryan answered.

  “Heard it,” Jak said.

  “Many times,” Mildred chided.

  “Well, it is quite the story….” Doc said, his words trailing off until he bit into his peach again.

  And for the next five minutes, the companions walked the roadway in relative silence except for the sounds of crunching fruit and the scrape of their boots on the asphalt.

  THE SUN WAS JUST beginning to fall behind the western horizon as they entered the outskirts of Falls ville.

  Most of the buildings they’d passed until now were in ruins. One of the buildings had been called Ripley’s, with the outside covered with pictures of two-headed goats, men joined at the hip and other common Deathlands mutations. The friends were somewhat confused by the renderings, wondering if the structure was predark or skydark.

  “Ripley was a man who collected predark oddities and put them in museums for people to gawk at,” Mildred explained.

  “People pay jack see this?” Jak asked.

  Mildred smiled. “As one of Mr. Ripley’s colleagues once said, there’s a triple-stupe bastard born every minute.”

  There were other similar establishments, all of them advertising wonders that were all too common in the Deathlands, many of them having to do with wax.

  When the road ended at the water’s edge, they turned left and followed the weed-infested trail that ran parallel to the river as it flowed toward the falls. As they came to the falls themselves, the air became filled with a moist chill as the water crested over the falls and crashed onto the rocky gorge below. It was an impressive sight, but the amount of water running over the falls was nothing like what Mildred had said flowed there in predark times.

  On their left was the strangely shaped tower that stood some two hundred feet above them and likely gave an excellent view of the falls and the surrounding area. Ryan made a note to check out the tower in the morning light. If the sky was clear, he’d be able to do an easy recce of the area for miles around. Directly in front of them were two buildings that looked to be fairly stable. The first was a large structure fronted by a steel framework that had obviously been covered in glass during predark times, but was now nothing more than a white steel skeleton. On one of the metal ribs a faded green sign read Casino Niagara, which was a special kind of place, Mildred explained, where people gambled away all their jack.

  “Why would they do that?” Dean asked.

  “For fun,” Mildred answered.

  Next to the bones of the white skeleton was a much older building. It was also white, but only because that was the color of its stonework. Although most of the building’s windows had been blasted out, a few panes were still intact. Some of the pale red letters on the roof had toppled over, leaving the rest of the letters to read her ton-Fall View. It was obviously a hotel, and just as the sec men at the farm had said, there looked to be plenty of places to spend the night.

  “That one looks like a fine establishment,” Doc said. “Why do we not sleep there tonight?”

  “I could use some rest,” Krysty said, her hair falling straight down from her head and hanging limply over her shoulders. “Those last few miles really tired me out.”

  “I’m beat, too,” J.B. added. “I’d like to sit down for a while, mebbe have some more fruit and call it a night.”

  Ryan didn’t like the idea of sleeping in a strange building without a recce, but the ville seemed deserted enough and it wouldn’t be too hard to find a room on the first or second floor that they could make secure for the night. Besides, he was feeling exhausted himself, and a night in a hotel room, even the rad-blasted remnants of one, sounded good.

  “All right,” he said. “That’s where we’ll go. Jak and Mildred, scout the grounds around it and meet us in the lobby.”

  Jak handed his bag of fruit to Dean, and then the albino and the physician quickened their pace with blasters drawn and ready.

  “Are you looking forward to a night in bed, lover?” Krysty asked.

  “You have to ask?” Ryan answered.

  GRUNWOLD CLIMBED the last few steps to the top of the Skylon Tower slowly. The sec chief had double-timed it to the lookout station from Fox Farm, and his lungs were complaining against the strain. He took a few moments to rest at the entrance to the observation deck, not wanting to show his men any weakness, then entered when his breathing and heart rate had come back down to something closer to normal.

  “Where are they?” he asked the sec man on watch.

  “They’re heading toward the Fall view,” the sec man answered, not taking his eyes from the binoculars that were trained on the heart of the ville. “My guess is that they’re going to stay there tonight.”

  “Good,” Grundwold said. “Where’s the team on the ground?”

  “They’re a few hundred yards behind.”

  “Have they been spotted?”

  “No. I even lost sight of them myself a few times.”

>   “Have the outlanders been eating any fruit?” Grundwold asked.

  “Yes,” said the sec man. “They were all eating as they entered the ville. Looked pretty hungry, too.”

  “Excellent!” Grundwold said with a smile. “That should make them ripe for the picking.”

  Chapter Seven

  “Jak’s still scouting the inside. The area outside the hotel is clear,” Mildred reported. “And there’s no sign that anyone’s been through the area in a while.”

  Ryan nodded. He was glad for the news, but wasn’t sure how a ville with so many buildings didn’t have more people living in it. Where had all the people gone? It was another question whose answer would probably be forthcoming in time. But despite any misgivings Ryan had about staying in the old hotel, it was getting dark out and the friends needed to find a place to bed down for the night. “All right, let’s take a look inside and find a place to sleep.”

  The friends stepped through the broken glass that had once been the hotel’s front door and entered the lobby with blasters in hand. While there didn’t seem to be anyone living in the ville, a few of the hungry muties could still be crawling around looking for a meal. But even that seemed unlikely, since there was even less food in the ville than there was in all the surrounding rad-chilled farmland.

  As they moved through the lobby, Doc walked behind the front desk to have a look around. “Well, I’m honored to be one of the first guests here since 2001,” he said, wetting the tip of a pencil on his tongue and signing the guest book on behalf of the friends.

  The hotel was laid out in a pair of long corridors that stretched out in opposite directions from the lobby. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but they could probably establish a defensible position somewhere in the hotel, allowing them all the good night’s sleep they so desperately needed.

  Just then a door opened at the end of the ground-floor hallway. The friends immediately had their blasters raised and ready to fire, but it turned out to be Jak returning from his recce of the hotel’s upper floors.

  “Long halls, many rooms,” the albino teenager reported. “Second floor best. One way up, many ways out.”