Skydark Spawn

It took a few moments, but Jak was finally free. His pale white skin was covered with dark red abrasions, but at least he wasn’t bleeding. “Let’s get out of here,” Ryan growled.

“Sage advice,” Doc said, slashing at a thin but persistent vine that was still trying to encircle the one-eyed man.

“Wait!” Jak took a few steps and picked up the glass-armored gopher by the tail. “Not waste food.”

Ryan stood with the panga in his fist as Jak made his way out of the glass house. J.B. and Doc exited next, followed by Ryan.

“Think it’ll be good eating?” Dean asked, rubbing a hand over his stomach.

“The glass will probably come off with the skin,” Krysty commented.

“Not worry,” Jak said. He had recovered from his encounter with the vines and was obviously proud that he’d procured dinner for the friends. “When finished, taste like chicken.”

Ryan nodded as he wiped his panga clean. It probably would at that.

“TRIPLE STUPE,” Grundwold said, hitting the young sec man hard across the face.

A spray of blood and a single tooth flew out of Rory O’Brien’s mouth as his head snapped to the left. He spit once before speaking. “I just wanted to get a closer look at them, see what kind of blasters they were carrying. I thought the glass house would be plenty of cover.”

Grundwold’s hand came back across O’Brien’s face, and this time his knuckles struck him full on the cheek. There was more blood this time, but all of the young man’s teeth remained, however loose, inside his mouth. “You nearly gave away our position. They’ve got blasters and long knives and they probably know how to use them. If they hadn’t got caught up in those tanglers, they might have seen you and the baron would have had to kiss those two breeders goodbye.”

O’Brien’s eyes widened in fear at the mention of the baron. “Just trying to do my job, Chief.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve got a new job now, starting as soon as we get back to the farm. And if I ever find the lavs aren’t clean enough to drink out of, your next job will be in some death trap of a mill shoveling black dirt with your bare hands.”

There was a look on O’Brien’s face that hinted he wasn’t too pleased with the demotion.

Grundwold erased the look of displeasure with a hard punch that caught O’Brien flush under the right eye. “Understood?”

O’Brien wiped at the blood that was beginning to pour out of his nose. “Yes, sir.”

Grundwold looked at his bloody knuckles and shook his head. “Now get out of my sight.”

O’Brien, doing as he was told, was gone in an instant.

Chapter Four

The friends decided to eat the gopher while it was fresh. They set up a spit in the middle of a crossroads so they could see anyone approaching. Doc, Dean and J.B. foraged for firewood, while Jak took a great deal of pleasure in skinning and gutting the animal that almost cost him his life.

When Doc and Dean got back with the wood, Ryan whittled a long stick of green wood with his panga and gave it to Jak, who used it to skewer the gopher lengthwise. Then he placed the stick on the upright branches embedded in holes in the asphalt and checked to make sure it was balanced as it turned.

In minutes the fire was burning hot in the spit and the aroma of cooking meat made the friends’ mouths water. Unfortunately the smell would also attract the attention of every mutie for miles around.

“J.B., Krysty, Dean and Doc,” Ryan called, “take up a four-point perimeter. Triple red.”

While Jak seasoned the meat with a few herbs, Mildred made sure the gopher cooked evenly over the spit, and it wasn’t long before the meat was cooked well enough to eat. Jak cut seven portions from the animal, pierced the meat with sharpened branches and handed them out to the group so they could all eat while on lookout against a mutie attack.

When Jak handed Dean his piece, he stood over the boy waiting to hear him offer an opinion. “Taste like chicken?”

Dean took a bite out of the haunch, chewed the meat and grimaced. “Not really.”

“Cannie approaching,” Doc called.

Ryan turned and saw one of the thin spiderlike muties coming up the road. “Careful, people,” he commanded. “If there’s one out there, there’ll be more.”

“Want chilled?” Jak asked, his Colt Python at the ready.

“No,” Ryan said. “Not worth the ammo.”

“Then what?” Dean asked. “We can’t just wait until they surround us.”

The boy was right. While Ryan didn’t want to waste precious rounds killing muties, they had to do something before there were a hundred muties around them and they’d have to blast their way out. “Everyone finish eating. Take seconds if you want, but leave the rest behind.”

The friends quickly ate what Jak had provided for them, even though the meat was a little tough and hard to swallow. Ryan, Jak and Mildred took seconds, leaving more than half of the huge gopher on the spit.

“Let’s move,” Ryan said.

“Bon appetite,” Doc muttered in the direction of the muties.

In a flash the friends were on their feet, continuing the journey south. By the time the group had taken fifty paces the first few muties were crowding around the spit and tearing at the leftovers. After they’d taken sixty paces, the muties numbered in the dozens and the gopher was all but gone.

THE BASEMENT of the main building on Fox Farm was cold, wet and dark, and smelled of a variety of foul bodily fluids. This was where the problem breeders were brought to be made heavy. It was easier for them if they bred willingly, but it wasn’t necessary for them to cooperate. Breeders could still get heavy while being chained to the wall, and they birthed children after nine months in the basement just as well as those breeders who worked on the farm during the day and rutted every night. Their offspring weren’t as healthy as those of the farmworkers and they sometimes had to be put down, but it was still better to have them breed than send them away on a slave convoy.

Fox paced under the dim light of an electric bulb waiting for his sec men to bring down the latest breeder who’d refused to rut. While he waited, he walked the length of one of the walls the breeders were chained to. The first breeder was a black-haired girl who’d never rutted before she’d come to the farm. She’d refused every one of the men assigned to her, and when it became clear she’d simply been putting off rutting, Fox moved her into the basement and had his four top studs rut her each night for a month until he was sure she’d gotten heavy. When she didn’t bleed at the end of the four weeks, he stopped the rutting. A few months later she began showing of signs of heaviness, and now she was more than eight months along and could give birth at any time.

“How do you feel?” Fox asked.

“Good,” she answered, pulling the chains away from her naked legs.

“After the birth, will you be ready to rejoin us on the farm?”

“Oh, yes please,” she said, her empty, broken expression replaced by a hopeful smile.

“You’ll rut every night, then?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ll like it?”

“Yes…anything. I just want to get out of here.”

Fox smiled. Young ones always came around after just a single term in the basement. “You birth me a child and I’ll free you from those chains.”

“Thank you, Baron.”

Fox stepped forward and took his right foot out of his slipper so she could kiss it. When she did, Fox turned to Norman Bauer, his accountant, who stood nearby watching. “Make sure she’s comfortable after the birth…and give her three days’ free time in the ward before she starts work on the farm.”

Bauer opened the ledger and made a notation.