Black Harvest

It was a fair-sized ville in two distinct parts. On the edges were all manner of run-down and ramshackle dwellings, and several areas made up of tents. Ryan recognized a few of the structures as gaudy houses and canteens, and guessed that the rest were flophouses and shelters for the ville’s bottom-feeders. Past the outlying ghetto was a section of the ville that was fenced in by a wall of burned-out wags, piles of broken cinder blocks and bricks, and rusty and twisted steel girders. If there had once been a city on this spot, its remains had been pushed, pulled and dragged into a mile-long circle of eight-foot-high rubble. The front gate of the ville was a ten- or twelve-foot gap in the wall, which was closed off by a pair of thick wooden doors that swung freely on two massive hinged wooden posts. Most likely they served as telephone poles in pre-Dark days.

A lookout in a crow’s nest set atop the pole on the right acknowledged the driver of the wag as it approached, and the doors swung open slowly to let the vehicle inside the ville.

As the gap between the doors inched wider, Ryan studied the buildings inside the wall. Like the structures on the outside, most of the buildings inside looked slapped together, with a few looking as if they’d been made from the cargo containers. Windows had been cut into the sides of the big square boxes to make living quarters, while others had been fitted with pipes and exhausts that suggested to Ryan that the ville’s baron was more of a manufacturer than a trader. In the distance, toward the back of the ville, Ryan could make out large glass houses similar to the kind once used on pre-Dark farms. So, in addition to making items for trade, the ville grew its own food. That would explain the well-maintained wag and a well-armed and organized sec force.

There were obviously things worth protecting inside the walls.

The wag pulled up in front of a stack of square steel boxes, each set on top of another like bricks. The door to the wag opened and one of the sec men got out, followed by Eleander and Moira. Doc and the others got up to exit the wag along with the women, but Robards put up a hand to stop them. “They get off here,” he said. “You’re going somewhere else.”

The friends sat down.

Robards stepped off the wag and spoke with one of his sec men. When he was done, the sec man double-timed it down the road. Then the sec boss got back on the wag and it lurched forward as it slowly got back underway.

Jak let out a slight groan of pain as the wag was jostled by a bump in the road, then quickly said, “Not hurt.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Mildred responded.

The wag pulled up in front of another series of stacked steel boxes and Robards turned and pointed to Jak. “This is where he gets off. There are people inside who can help him. They know he’s coming.”

Jak got up from his seat.

Mildred stood up as well.

“Are you injured, too?” Robards asked Mildred.

“No, but I’m going with him,” Mildred said.

Robards seemed to consider it a moment.

“She has some experience as a healer,” Ryan said at last. “Especially with blaster wounds.”

Robards nodded, a bit reluctantly, and stepped off the wag. He led Jak and Mildred inside one of the stacked steel boxes and the rest of the friends waited several minutes for him to return.

“Think Jak will be all right?” J.B. asked.

“Be back good as new with Mildred looking after him,” Ryan answered.

“Knowing Master Lauren as I do, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he had several women fussing over him by nightfall, each one offering him their virtue more passionately than the one before.”

Ryan smiled at that.

The door to the steel box opened and Robards returned to the wag. “He’s in good hands now.”

Again the wag lurched as it began to move.

On the left side of the roadway, Ryan noticed a strange sort of paddock area. It was basically an empty space with old oil cans, concrete barricades and several fences serving no apparent purpose scattered across the grounds. It looked like an obstacle course, and Ryan thought it might be used to train the baron’s sec force.

On one side of the paddock was a high and wide concrete wall that had been pockmarked by blasterfire. Ryan had seen such walls before and knew that they were used mostly for executions. That would explain the darkest stains on the wall, but there were other stains—bright yellows and oranges, and even a few of them green—on the wall and all over the enclosure that defied explanation.

“What do you make of that?” Ryan asked J.B.

“Firing squad?”

“Mebbe, but who bleeds green?”

The wag began to slow as it approached a brick-and-stucco building that towered three stories over the rest of the surrounding structures. There were plenty of blown-out windows, and large cracks in the walls that ran from the top all the way down to its foundation. The building had obviously survived the shock wave from a big blast miles away that had wiped out the rest of the ville. But while the building was still standing, it looked as if one more good bang would bring the whole thing crashing down. At least that’s the way it looked from the outside. But despite the damage, the building was by far in the best condition of any inside the ville, and it was obviously the place where the baron lived. However, judging by the size of it, there had to be plenty of others who lived inside as well.

“Last stop,” Robards announced.

“The baron lives here,” Ryan said.

“Yes, and so will you for the next few days.”

The muscles along Ryan’s back tensed at the words. “You make it sound like we’re prisoners.”

“Not at all,” Robards said. “That’s merely the usual duration of the baron’s hospitality. He grows tired of guests who don’t capture his interest, but I have a feeling your group will be allowed to stay for as long as you like.”

“When will we meet the baron?” Doc asked.

“He’s tied up with a business matter at the moment, but he’s assured me that he will be attending a small reception being held in your honor prior to this evening’s dinner.”

“A reception?” Doc quipped. “And I left my formal dinner jacket at home.”

Krysty let out a slight laugh.

“Don’t worry, Doc,” J.B. said. “The food will taste the same.”

“This way,” Robards said, leading them into the building.

THE INTERIOR of the steel box was hot and smelled of rust and urine, feces and blood. The sunlight shining in through the open door forced the man chained to one of the walls to squint to protect his eyes.

Baron DeMann, dressed in an immaculately clean lab coat, entered the steel box and pinched the end of his nose to fight off the stench. “I thought you said this stinkhole was hosed down.”

“Done last night,” the sec man on the baron’s left said.

“I want it clean just before I enter, understand?”

None of the sec men answered him.

Then one of the men said, “Mebbe he emptied his bowels this morning when we told him you’d be visiting.”

The rest of the sec men laughed, but the baron wasn’t impressed.

The laughter quickly died.

Baron DeMann stopped several feet from where the prisoner was chained up by his arms. They’d hoisted him up onto the wall just high enough so that his feet were off the floor, and his arms had to carry all his body weight. After a few days in that position, his arms had stretched enough for him to get his toes onto the floor, relieving some of the load on his arms, but not the pain.

The baron looked at the man’s feet touching the floor of the box. “Crank him up another six inches,” he ordered.