by James Axler
Chapter Thirty-Eight
J.B.’s first shot had missed the tall wooden pole that held the power lines bringing electricity into the complex. He adjusted the wag slightly, moved in closer and the second blast from the cannon cut the pole down better than any ax ever could.
The pole had toppled slowly, and it took several seconds for the lines to snap and the lights to go out inside the complex. There would likely be reserve or emergency lighting coming on at any moment, but J.B. didn’t wait around to find out for sure. He threw the wag into gear, circled back around toward the front gate and was now speeding toward the chain-link fence.
“Hang on and cover up!” he cried.
He expected spotlights to catch the wag as they headed toward the main gate, but the complex was still in darkness. Maybe there was no emergency lighting after all.
The fence was in front of them.
“Three, two, one!” J.B. counted down.
The front of the wag struck the fence. The vehicle slowed, and for a moment it seemed as if they might be stopped dead in their tracks, but the steel gave way and they burst through the gate with plenty of speed.
J.B. also expected to be under fire at this point, but the sudden plunge into darkness had caused confusion among the ranks of sec men. Many searching the orchards were now caught in the dark.
As they charged across the courtyard, a sec man came out from around the corner of the main building. Dean saw him first, cutting the man down with a sweep of the .50 caliber.
“Shorter bursts,” J.B. shouted to Dean.
“Sorry.”
J.B. slowed the wag rather than stopping it, deciding a moving target was much harder to hit than one that was standing still. “Go,” he told Clarissa.
She jumped out of the wag, followed by Jak.
A moment later they were gone.
J.B. turned the wag in the direction of one of the sec towers overlooking the courtyard and main gate. “Doc?” he said.
“Ready when you are, Captain,” Doc answered.
J.B. pulled the trigger. The cannon let out a loud thud. The air around the wag smelled of cordite. Then the sec tower was suddenly without one of its legs.
It slowly began to fall—toward the wag.
“Uh, might I suggest that we move our vehicle to avoid an unhappy circumstance,” Doc said.
J.B. didn’t answer. He was too busy trying to get the wag out of the way of the falling tower.
WHEN THE EMERGENCY lights came on, the baron was gone.
And so was Krysty.
But there was little time to dwell on that with so many sec men in the room.
In the dark, Mildred had retrieved her ZKR target pistol, and when the lights kicked in she was ready. She fired two shots at the sec men at the door to the nursery, hitting the first in the head, blowing a chunk of skull off the top of it. She caught the second in the throat, and he fell to the floor clutching at his neck in a futile attempt to staunch the flow of blood.
Grundwold was still moaning in pain on the floor, trying to get to his feet despite the wound to his shoulder. Mildred lowered her blaster and put a round into his heart before he had a chance to get onto his knees.
“What’s going on in here?” asked the old woman, who up until now had been taking care of the newborns in another part of the nursery.
“Liberation,” Mildred said. “We’re getting out.”
“These people don’t know anything about freedom,” the old woman told her. “I remember it, but most don’t know any other kind of life. In fact, some even like it here.”
“Well, maybe now at least they’ll have a choice.”
The old woman shrugged. “I suppose. Good luck to you. I’ve got children to tend to.”
Mildred reached down and took the Persuader 500 pistol-grip longblaster from the holster of the dead former sec chief. “Here,” she said. “It might come in handy.”
The old woman took the blaster and hefted it in her hand. “It might at that.”
Then she picked up Krysty’s Smith & Wesson from its hiding place and tucked it into the waistband of her jeans. Obviously Krysty had been taken hostage by the baron and his new sec chief.
The two men might as well have signed their death warrants.
WHEN THE FIRST BOOM sounded, Ryan thought it might mean that J.B. was near. When there was a second boom and the lights went out, he was sure of it.
“That’s it,” he told Maurice. “Time to move.”
The two men left the cabin and headed for the main building.
SEC CHIEF GANLEY had been first over the fence at the onset of darkness and was now helping others climb down from the wooden ladder.
In the distance, something boomed like a cannon for the second time.
The sound startled one of the raiders who was at the top of the outside ladder and crossing over to the one on the inside of the complex. The man faltered and was forced to reach out with his hand and grab at the fence. He screamed loud and shrill in anticipation of the electricity that was about to flow through his body.
But nothing happened.
“The fence is down,” Ganley called out, realizing they’d just been given a lucky break. “Everyone over as quick as you can.”
Minutes later the raiders were roaming the orchard freely, hunting for breeders.
HUNGRY MUTIES POURED IN through the broken front gate like water through a sluice.
And when they realized the power was out, they began climbing over the fence, too, surging into the complex from all sides.
In the eerily dim glow of the emergency lights, sec men raised their blasters at the charging muties, but hesitated when they saw how many of the hunger-mad creatures they were up against.
Some sec men fired; others ran, as far as the front gate and beyond.
Most ended up as meals for the starving mutants.
The lucky ones were chilled quickly.
The unlucky ones were eaten alive.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Ryan left the cabin and, along with Maurice, ran to the main building. The sec men in the area didn’t seem all too concerned with their progress as the thud of a large-bore weapon and the crackle of heavy-caliber machine blasters had them all scrambling for cover.
As Ryan turned the corner on the building, a familiar flash of white caught his eye.
“Jak!” he shouted.
The spot of white reappeared in the blown-out hole where the front doors used to be. Jak waited for Ryan and when they met, the two shook hands.
“Good see you,” Jak said.
“Likewise.” Ryan nodded.
Clarissa came up behind Jak. Maurice was standing by Ryan’s side.
“This Clarissa. Friend of muties. Helping us.”
“Maurice,” Ryan said, gesturing with his head in the slave’s direction. “Friend of mine.”
“There’s the one-eye,” someone shouted.
Blasterfire suddenly began slamming into the wall behind them. They all dived for cover, scraping and cutting their hands on the shards of glass scattered around the building. Ryan found himself pinned behind a column supporting the building’s second floor. Jak and Clarissa had also gained cover, but Maurice had been caught by the sec men’s blasters. His body jerked as he was torn apart by rounds coming from somewhere high up and out of sight. He stood for several seconds, then finally fell to the ground a bloody mess.
“He was going to take me to the nursery,” Ryan said. “That’s where Krysty and Mildred are.”
“I can take you there,” Clarissa said.
Ryan wanted to move, but they were still being pinned down by sec men on the roof of a nearby building.
But just below the sound of blasterfire came the grinding of a wag engine, low at first, but growing louder by the second. Without warning there was a boom that shook the ground, followed by a small explosion.
Men screamed, debris filled the air and the rain of blasterfire abruptly came to an end.
“Lead
the way!” Ryan told Clarissa.
The three of them entered the building.
RYAN, JAK AND Clarissa hurried down the steps, taking them two at a time. They all had their blasters at the ready, expecting a sec man to turn the corner on them at the bottom of the stairs and they’d have nowhere to turn.
But they made it down without incident.
“Left or right?” Jak asked.
“Right,” Clarissa answered.
A crack of a blaster echoed from down the hall, and all three took cover against the wall of the stairwell.
After several seconds of silence, a second shot rang out, followed by a groan and the sound of a falling body.
J.B. was best at recognizing the sounds various blasters made and could sometimes even identify the type of ammo being used, but even Ryan knew enough to identify the sharp crack of a .38-caliber Czech-built ZKR. It was possible that a sec man was now using Mildred’s target pistol, but the spacing of the single shots and their accuracy told Ryan all he needed to know.
“Mildred,” he called out in the direction the shot had come.
“Who wants to know?” came the response.
“Me, Ryan.”
She turned the corner, blaster raised in case it was some sort of trick, and smiled. “It’s good to see you, Ryan, and I have to admit, I would have even been happy if it were Doc instead of you.”
“I’ll have to tell him.”
“He’ll never believe you.”
Ryan was done with small talk. “Where’s Krysty?”
“The baron took her hostage when the lights went out,” Mildred reported.
Ryan turned to Clarissa. “Where would he have gone with her?”
“Depends what he wanted to do with her.”
Ryan thought about it for a second. “To get away?”
“Then he’d go to the barn and try for a wag.”
“Then we head back outside.”
Ryan and Mildred began moving back up the stairs, but Jak and Clarissa remained where they were.
“What’s wrong?” Ryan asked.
“Sister prisoner in basement,” Jak explained. “Promised rescue for help.”
Ryan understood. “All right. You go with her, Jak. Mildred comes with me. If you’re not outside in twenty minutes, we’ll come back in looking for you.”
“Won’t have to,” Jak said. “Not be there.”
Without another word the two pairs went their separate ways, Ryan and Mildred heading up, Jak and Clarissa heading down.
JUST OUTSIDE the nursery, Baron Fox escorted the two breeders from his office along the hallway. He’d given instructions to the new sec chief to use the redheaded beauty to convince the one-eyed outlander to leave the farm without destroying it completely. If it worked, wonderful, but even if it didn’t, he’d be safe and in a position to reclaim the farm in no time.
When he reached the dungeon, he found a sec man standing guard there.
“Make sure no one comes down this hallway,” the baron ordered. “No slaves, muties, outlanders…Not even any sec men. Understood?”
“Yes, Baron!”
Baron Fox pushed the breeders past.
Farther down the hall and around a corner, the sec man heard a heavy door open, then close, and then the sound of a heavy mechanism locking into place.
And then only silence.
Chapter Forty
The slaves opened the doors to their cabins.
It was happening.
The one-eyed outlander had spread the word that there would be something happening that night, a chance for escape, for freedom, and now it was happening.
There were dead sec men everywhere, falling like ripe fruit at the end of the season. Blasterfire cut them down like axes, and their remades were being scooped up by slaves, the new masters of the farm.
Muties were running through the complex, eating everything in sight, especially uniformed sec men.
It was total chaos, and the slaves were never happier.
Marguerite, a black-haired breeder who had given the baron six offspring in four years, could hardly believe her eyes. Slaves ran from cabin to cabin, some carrying blasters, some with tree branches, all with wild-eyed excitement in their eyes.
“Come look, Joshua,” she said, stepping out of her cabin. “They’re chilling a sec man over there, doing him with his own blaster.”
Joshua, the man Marguerite had been rutting with the past six nights, stepped out of the cabin and joined her outside. About twenty-five yards away, four slaves were kicking and beating a sec man who’d been caught out in the orchards alone. They had shot him in the belly with his remade and were now taking great pleasure in torturing him before letting him die.
“This means we’re free,” Joshua shouted.
Marguerite shook her head and looked away. She was an older woman, well into her thirties, and had been a slave so long she feared her own freedom. Everything had been provided for her in the past, and she’d become comfortable with that. Being free meant fending for herself, feeding herself and finding her own way in life. The thought of it terrified her.
“We can leave here,” Joshua said. “Together. We could go to one of the eastern villes, maybe another barony. Whatever we do, we’ll be doing it together.”
Joshua’s words gave Marguerite confidence, reason to hope.
Just then an arrow caught Joshua in the throat. Great gouts of blood began to pour from the gaping wound, and the fire that had been in his eyes just a moment before began to dim.
Marguerite turned in time to have her face covered in a fine red mist, and her body streaked by the blood that was leaving Joshua’s body like oil from a can.
“What, where?” she asked in confusion.
Joshua fell to the ground.
“Who wants this one?” sec chief Ganley said.
A dozen raiders stood behind him armed with a mix of blasters, bows and pikes.
“I’ll take her,” a young man said, barely out of his teens.
“What’s going on?” Marguerite asked. “Who are you?”
Ganley ignored her questions and pressed on, the rest of the raiders, save one, following him.
“My name’s Matthew,” he said. “I’ve come from Reichel ville, a fishing village on Erie Lake not far from here.”
“What do you want?”
“You,” he said. “We’ve come for breeders, new blood for our dying ville.”
“I can give you offspring,” Marguerite said.
“Good,” Matthew said, leading her into the orchards and the staging area they had set up on the other side of the fence. “I hope you can help me raise them, too.”
Marguerite was confused. “I’m not going to be a slave?”
“No, not a slave. You’re going to be my wife.”
JAK AND CLARISSA passed the nursery and rounded the corner to the dungeon, then stopped and backtracked around the corner again.
A sec man stood guard in front of the door that led to the dungeon. He was armed with a 12-gauge pump-action blaster, and he looked determined not to let anyone get by him.
“Must chill,” Jak said in a whisper.
Clarissa put her hand on Jak’s arm. “No, we need him alive.”
“Why?”
“My sister and the others are chained to the dungeon wall. We’ll need keys to unlock and set them free.”
Jak nodded, then reached inside his coat for one of the leaf-bladed throwing knifes he kept hidden on his person. He balanced the knife in his throwing hand, mentally counted to three, then rolled past the corner into the hallway and came up onto his knees to make the throw. The knife sailed straight and true, catching the sec man in the right bicep and involuntarily forcing open his right hand. The blaster fell to the floor with a heavy clang, and Jak got to his feet, his huge Colt Python leveled at the sec man’s chest.
The sec man grabbed at his wounded arm with his left hand and tried to kneel to pick up his longblaster.
“No,” Jak said
.
“Give us the keys for the dungeon,” Clarissa yelled as she came up behind Jak, “and he won’t chill you.”
“Fuck you, you snow-headed mutie freak!”
Jak squeezed the trigger and blew off part of the sec man’s right foot.
“Where are the keys?” Clarissa demanded.
The sec man was too busy writhing on the floor and screaming in pain to answer.
Jak pushed the barrel of the Python against the man’s genitals.
“Tell me where the keys are,” Clarissa said softly.
The sec man stared at Jak’s big blaster in horror. “There’s a master key in my right pocket.” He fished inside his pants with a trembling hand and produced a key on a Lucite fob that had a picture of the falls on it in all its predark glory.
Clarissa took the key from him. “Thanks.”
Jak raised the Python to the sec man’s head. “Lose lot blood,” he said to Clarissa. “Die anyway.”
She nodded.
Jak looked at the sec man. “Not mutie.”
Then he pulled the trigger.
RYAN AND MILDRED were back outside the front doors to the main building looking for Krysty and her captor.
The courtyard was in shambles and utter chaos. The bloody remains of several sec men were strewed across the ground, several of them in the very circle Ryan had fought the day before. Muties ran through the compound, eating fruit, brandishing weapons and generally making up for years of hunger and near starvation.
There were sec men still in the complex, but they all seemed to be trying to escape out the front gate, like rats jumping off a sinking ship. It was obvious to them all they’d lost the battle, and now they were just saving themselves.
“Where are we going to find Krysty in all this?” Mildred asked.
Ryan scanned the complex. “I know from experience,” he said. “There are a hundred places to hide out in.”
“She could be anywhere.”
And then Ryan saw something, a familiar flash of titian hair, and he knew that their search was over. “You can stop looking,” Ryan said, pointing. “She’s found us. There.”
Mildred followed the line made by Ryan’s finger. “That’s the baron’s new sec chief. Name’s Fillinger.”