Farmer's Creed

by Christopher Woods

  “You have a point,” I said, “but I think if they turn on us, it won’t matter how many men or guns we have when we get to the Mint.”

  “And yet you’ll have them,” he said.

  “I’ve seen that look before,” I said, holding my hands up. “I surrender.”

  I heard running feet coming from around the farmhouse behind us.

  Twiggy Lamb slid around the corner and stopped as he saw me. “You…gotta come quick, Zee! Mia found someone hurt out by the silos! She looks funny.”

  I grasped his shoulders. “How’s she look funny?”

  “She has fur!”

  “Speak of the devil,” I muttered. “Pop, get Doc. And see if you can find Jimmy.”

  “Gotcha.” He grabbed Twiggy before he could turn and run back. “You come with me.”

  I nodded and launched myself forward with some of the speed Jimmy had been showing me. My hearing was much better than it had been before, and I heard a growl ahead of me as I neared the silos. As I rounded the corner, I tried my best to focus. What I saw happening in front of me was surreal.

  A woman was huddled in a fetal position on the ground, and Mia was covering her with her own body. Twiggy had been right. The woman had red tinged fur on all the exposed areas. My attention was on the girl for a fraction of a second only and moved on to the others in my field of vision. There were three large men who had obviously been spliced. Two were grey and made me think of the Wolfman from the ancient movies I used to see Pop watching. Another had the coloring of a lion, and he was facing a man who was enormous. All I could see of this guy was his back, but it was obvious he was protecting the woman.

  It was easy enough to pick the side I’d help when one of the wolfmen made it around the giant and raised his clawed hand for a swipe at Mia.

  My .45 was in my hand faster than I’d thought humanly possible, and I began pulling the trigger as quickly as the gun would fire. I couldn’t risk the wolfman getting a swing at Mia.

  The first bullet hit his left leg as my gun was rising. The second caught his hip, and he shifted to face me. Everything seemed to be in slow motion except him. He was damned fast. He managed to take a step toward me before the next bullet hit his chest, followed by two more.

  The other wolfman was halfway across the distance between us when I saw Jimmy. Even as the world seemed to be moving slow, he was moving fast. His shoulder hit the wolfman with enough force to crush the ribs where he impacted. Then Jimmy’s arm circled the guy’s throat and he jerked backward with his whole body. There was a crack, and the wolfman sagged.

  We both turned to the lion, to find that the giant was crushing him in his enormous arms. The guy’s clawed hands raked up and down the giant’s sides, but he wouldn’t let go. I shot the thrashing lion between his eyes, and he stopped thrashing.

  The giant turned toward me with a face that resembled a hound as much as it did a man, and I could see the skin-colored fur covering his arms. He took a step toward me, and I held up a finger.

  “No way, big guy.”

  “Bogs!” I heard a female voice from behind me. “These are the people we’re looking for!”

  He stopped. I glanced back to see two more women rise from the cornfield and step out into the clearing. Both of them had been genetically altered. Both were beautiful, but they had different shades of fur. One was a silver grey, and the other a brilliant white with splotches of a blue or grey.

  The one who’d been curled up on the ground moaned, and Doc came around the corner.

  “What the hell?’

  “The one over with Mia is injured, Doc. See what you can do.”

  As Doc got closer, the big man looked like he was about to hyperventilate.

  “He’s a doctor, big guy,” I said. “He’ll help her if he can. Bogs. Is that your name?”

  “He help?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. “I am Bogs.”

  “Good. If I put this gun away, are you going to be nice?”

  He looked over at the other two women. The silver-grey furred woman nodded to him.

  “Bogs be nice,” he said.

  Blood was dripping from his sides where the lion had raked his claws, but he seemed to take no notice.

  Pop rounded the corner.

  I looked at him and shrugged. “Don’t say a word about clowns. We mentioned these guys, and they show up.”

  “Not sayin’ a damn word,” he said. He looked around the clearing and shook his head. “You look like you have this well in hand. You settle it all. I’m going to break beans.”

  He turned and walked away.

  “Really, Pop?”

  He didn’t pause.

  “Pop?”

  I turned back to the others, who all looked at me expectantly. My shoulders slumped. What the hell was I going to do with four Genofreaks? And how had it become my job?

  Sometimes job descriptions become a little strange in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 17

  “She’s in pretty rough shape, Zee,” Doc said. “Despite the fact that her gene splicing is so far beyond anything I’m familiar with, I think she’ll pull through. Those wolf hybrids got to her sometime before they got here.”

  “I’ll be finding out soon enough where they came from. It’s probably not a good thing for this to happen right before I deal with the Genos at the Convention Center.”

  “Maybe it is a good thing,” he said. “Maybe they can tell you what to expect when you get there.”

  “Probably expect to get attacked for killing their guys.”

  “That could be the case, but you’ll never know if you don’t talk to them. This one is going to pull through. That might be the first thing they need to hear.”

  “True enough,” I said.

  I walked out of the Infirmary to find the huge Geno, Bogs, waiting outside. He was sitting on the step to the building, grinning. It was a little bit disconcerting. I hadn’t dealt with Genofreaks before this, and he looked so much like a hound dog. His jaws were drooping, and I swear he had that same look in his eyes.

  “She’s going to be alright,” I said.

  “Bogs hear through walls. Jaela will pull through.”

  I nodded. “Now I need you to go in there and let Doc work on those cuts of yours.”

  He nodded and stood. I followed the Geno into the office. Doc sat him on the bed next to the other Geno I assumed was named Jaela. She was sleeping, and I’m pretty sure the big guy didn’t take his eyes off her through the whole procedure as Doc worked on his wounds. He whined like a dog a few times as Doc hit certain spots. I stayed through the whole thing. If Bogs had wanted to, he could have snapped Doc in two. I was there for security.

  The other two women were with Deli and Grady, who were getting them some food. They had looked as if they hadn’t eaten in a while.

  “Okay, Bogs,” I said. “You’re all patched up. Don’t scratch at the bandages. If it itches, that means it’s healing. If you’re hungry, I’ve got some food for you.”

  His eyes widened with excitement, and he grinned again.

  “Come on, then.” I followed him out the door. “Don’t worry about your friend. She’s in good hands, and Doc will make sure she gets to eat when she wakes.”

  * * *

  I left Bogs on the Infirmary porch, happily chewing on the calorie bar from an MRE.

  Doc was inside, sitting and staring at the sleeping Geno.

  “What is it, Doc?”

  “Something is bothering me. When did they outlaw the whole Geno thing? It was close to twenty years ago, was it not?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “I thought so.” He nodded toward the woman. “Problem is, this girl is no more than sixteen years old.”

  “I can’t tell with the fur how old she is,” I said. “It covers any discernable aging features.”

  “Teeth don’t lie, Zee. She’s fifteen or sixteen. Worse yet, Bogs is only about twelve.”
<
br />   “What?”

  “Don’t let his size fool you; he’s about twelve. I don’t know where they came from, but someone didn’t stop making Genos when they were supposed to.”

  “Could they be second generation?”

  “I don’t think so. I saw some second gens back a few years ago, and they would have traits from both parents. These are pure. At least these two are pure. I haven’t examined the other two yet.”

  “Unless one of the parents was unmodified,” I said.

  “Even then, they’d have imperfections in the genetics. I’ve seen a couple of human/Geno kids, too. Usually the fur would only be on parts of the body instead of a perfect coat.”

  “Doc, you seem to know a lot about Genos.”

  “I wasn’t always a small-town doctor, Zee. I spent some time in different parts of the country. I ran into quite a few Genos when I was working in Manhattan.”

  “You were in Manhattan?”

  “The wealthy needed doctors, too,” he said with a grin. “The rich folks were the ones who got into the Geno mods, much to their detriment. They sacrificed forty or fifty years for their Geno mods. Average life expectancy for a Geno was thirty to forty years. Those who live in the city now are mostly in their thirties already. They’re a dying breed.”

  “And then there’s a sixteen-year-old laying here,” I said.

  “Exactly. I’m familiar with the neighborhood where the Genos lived in Philly. I don’t think she comes from there.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “There were no kids when I was there ten years back,” he said, “and the pure blood seems to point to someone dabbling in Geno mods again. Or they never stopped. If they never stopped, I have my doubts it could be pulled off in the city.”

  “I guess I need to go talk to them then. We could sit here and guess all day long. Better to just ask, I imagine.”

  “More than likely.”

  I walked back out on the porch where Bogs was waiting.

  “We go talk to Simi and Fawn?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Unless you can tell me where you came from.”

  “We went a long way in a boat. It was not fun. I was hungry most of the time, but Jaela gave me some of her food, and it helped. I eat a lot.”

  “I do to, buddy. We’ll make sure you’re not hungry as long as you stay with us. One thing we have plenty of is food. Let’s go see your friends.”

  “Jaela is my best friend, but Simi and Fawn are nice, too.”

  We walked across the main square to the Mess Hall. Everyone wanted to call it the diner or the cafeteria, but we had quite a few military folks in our group by then, and it became the Mess Hall.

  We walked into the room to find both of the Genos in the process of undressing. Both Grady and Deli stood with their mouths hanging open.

  “Well?” I said.

  “Stop,” Deli said. “That’s not what we mean.”

  Grady looked at me. “It’s not what you think.”

  “Buddy, you have no idea what I’m thinking, do you?”

  “I know what anyone else would think,” he said, “and it’s not that.”

  I grinned.

  “Seriously,” he said. “We asked what useful skills they had that could help the Farms, and they both started undressing.”

  Deli was pulling the shirt back closed on the girl with white fur.

  “Simi is very pretty,” Bogs said.

  “Yep,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not even sure I want to hear this story.”

  I’m not sure which was worse, what I thought the story would be, or what it actually turned out to be. There are times I still just want to burn everything to the ground in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 18

  “Sex slaves?” Pop asked. “They’re still children.”

  “I know, Pop.” I sat down in the rocker beside him on the porch. “Best I can tell, they came from some island down in the Caribbean. They were modded at birth to be groomed as sex slaves for some of the old Corporate Heads of what was left of JalCom. The bombs fell, and they had a surplus of subjects and a lack of supplies. The girls were sold to some pirates, along with Bogs. He ate more than they wanted to feed him, and they made him part of the package deal.”

  “I don’t know if I even want to hear the rest,” he said.

  “I had to listen, so you’re going to hear it, too.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me in the world we have now,” he said. “But this was going on before? Are we wrong to try to save this place?”

  “You’ve already seen reasons to save it, Pop. I wanted to burn it, and even I’ve seen reasons to save it.”

  “Alright, let me hear it,” he said, shaking his head. “Those poor kids.”

  “The pirates did what pirates do, and they sold the girls to a source on the coast who knew about the island. The islanders gave the pirates the guy’s name. They called him Galloway. He’d bought from them before, so he took the girls and Bogs. Used Bogs in an arena for a while, but that didn’t last long when the boy cried every time he hurt one of the other fighters.”

  “Jesus,” Pop muttered. “What was he, maybe ten?”

  “Around that, which means those girls were in their early teens, thirteen or so.

  “The girls were sold again to some other Genos from inside the city. Bogs wasn’t part of the deal, and he’d become quite attached to the girls by then. He was fighting the guards when another buyer saw it and took him. He was a sneaky bastard, and stole the girls from the group who were transporting them to the Convention Center. He had something more sinister in mind for them than breeding stock for the Genos.

  “He turned them loose in a warehouse, and sent his men in with weapons to hunt them down. Bogs killed them all, and they ran, but the Genos were still after them and pursued. You saw the end result of that chase.”

  “Well, they’ll not have any of that here.”

  Pop stood up and stormed off toward Grady and Deli’s house, where the Genos were staying at the moment. I didn’t bother following. I knew what would happen. Pop was tough as leather, but he was a good man. He would give the kids a fair shake, and I knew it. I had a caravan to finish setting up, and there were three Geno bodies that needed to be dropped down a mine shaft.

  I watched Pop stalking down our short street. It was rare to see him angry. He’d been stunned by the abattoir we’d found in Destil, but this was pure outrage. He’d been speaking of our civilization as something to be sought after, but this sort of thing shouldn’t have been happening. They’d taken decades from babies when they changed their genes, then raised those babies to be sex slaves for the rich. Why would we want to preserve “civilization” if that’s what it was? I understood that outrage, because I felt it myself. I’d felt it during the food riots in the war. I’d felt it when I saw those people held in cages as we scouted Destil. I felt it when the girls told me their story, and I’d have a hard time giving food to the sort of people who did this to them. When we got over to the coast, I decided, I might just shoot some people.

  As I headed toward the wagon train that had just finished loading, I saw a familiar form inside the cupola with the fifty.

  “Did you ever get to shoot that thing, Gee?”

  “Only in training, Sir!”

  “Be ready,” I said. “Seriously thinking about shooting some people this trip.”

  “After what I heard from Gayle, I am too.”

  Gayle Fontane had been present through a lot of the story the three teen Genos had told us, and she’d been as outraged as any of us. Maybe more. She’d lived through abuse from her father for over a year after the Fall. Deli and Gayle had lived a similar horror to that of the girls, and I thought they might be a couple of friends the girls could talk to. What bothered me the most was the lack of outrage in the Genos. They’d been raised from their earliest years to be sold. It would be our job to show them what it meant to be free.

  I wa
lked to the field to get Dagger, only to find him running after Bogs near the other side of the pasture. I started to yell, but they both stopped, and Bogs turned around and chased the big horse back across the field. I stood there for a few minutes and just watched them play. Sometimes it was hard to keep in mind that the boy was twelve years old. Simi told us they used more dog genes in him than they should have, and it had left the boy with less in the way of mental faculties than he should have. He grew at an astonishing rate, though. By the time the boy was three, he’d gained most of that size. What it would mean to the boy’s lifespan, no one knew.

  Dagger saw me and whinnied, then he cut across the field at a run. Bogs was right behind with a grin on his face. I opened the gate and both of them ran through. Dagger turned back around to trot back toward me, and Bogs was right beside him.

  “Big horse is fun,” he said.

  “Yes he is. I’m glad you two are friends.”

  “Others are scared of me. This one likes to play.”

  “He’s not scared of many things.” I patted the big black horse’s shoulder and pulled a carrot from my pocket. “Should have seen him a year and a half back. He was all skittish and jumpy.”

  “I never saw a horse before. We not have horses on the island. Simi told me Garik was gene spliced with horse. He was same age as me. He was sold…” He looked at his hand and you could see him concentrating. “Four years ago. Simi not tell me why lady bought Garik.”

  My teeth ground together. They were kids. I decided I would find out when we reached the coast. I intended to have a talk with this Galloway fellow. I really wanted to know where this island was located. It might take years before I could do something about it, but one day I planned to give them a visit.

  Some people need to pay for their sins in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *