Black Harvest

by James Axler

Robards went to the man’s side and stood over him for a moment.

  “Please,” he cried. “Please help me.”

  Robards lifted his blaster and put a round into the man’s head.

  “Well, are you going to let this man’s death go unavenged? Let’s get those bastards.”

  The sec men started down the road after the wag.

  “WE’RE THROUGH,” Mildred called down to J.B. and Ryan in the cab.

  Eleander came forward. “The gate is over to the left.”

  “She says look to your left for the gate.”

  J.B. nodded and the wag began to ease to the left side of the roadway.

  “I hate to spoil the well-deserved moment of self-congratulation, but I’m afraid we still have a few persistent sec men to deal with.”

  Krysty lifted herself up to peer over the back of the steel box and saw that three sec men were running after the wag with their blasters held waist-high.

  The one in the middle got a shot off and Krysty instinctively ducked, only to hear the round tink against the heavy gauge steel of the box’s back door.

  She rose up again and saw the sec man on the left lighting another Molotov cocktail.

  The chances of another of the homemade bombs falling unbroken into the steel box were slim at best.

  “Mildred!” Krysty called out.

  The doctor turned her focus from the front of the wag to the rear.

  “There’s another bomb on the way. Try to take it out before it joins us.”

  Mildred nodded and scanned the roadway behind the wag and the three sec men following it.

  At that moment the sec man launched the bomb at the wag.

  It flew in a flaming arc that was sure to land in the middle of the box and shatter against one of the heavy steel sides.

  Mildred steadied her ZKR 551 target pistol on the flaming bottle and squeezed off three shots. The first two narrowly missed the target, but the third caught it fully, shattering the glass and creating a giant fireball that fell well short of the wag.

  Inside the box, Doc grabbed one of the lighter fuel cans and began swinging it on the end of his right arm, back and forth, back and forth until he had enough momentum to toss the can over the back end of the box.

  After the can was over the side, they all listened for the sound of it hitting the ground.

  Whumpf!

  They could feel the heat coming from the ignited fuel, and when they looked over the end of the box they could see a line of flame burning across the road, cutting off the friends from the rest of the pursuing sec men.

  “That should keep them off our back for a while,” Krysty said.

  “One hopes a long while,” Doc interjected. “It would seem we have another problem in front of us.”

  The wag came to a stop. The gate was just past the building in front of them.

  The gate was closed, and the sec men guarding it didn’t look as if they were about to open it without a fight.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Ryan got out of the cab and climbed up the side of the wag into the box.

  “How many sec men are on the gate?” he asked Eleander.

  “Just two.”

  “And probably well-armed,” Ryan said.

  “I can open the gate,” Eleander told him. “I know how to operate it, and I’ve done it before.”

  Ryan nodded. “All right. Krysty and I will take you to the gate.”

  Doc took a step forward. “I am going with you.”

  Ryan looked at Doc and Eleander in turn and knew the old man wouldn’t be dissuaded.

  “All right, the four of us, then. Let’s move!”

  SEC CHIEF VIVIANI brought his force to within several hundred yards of the ville’s front gate. He wanted to advance through the gate and into the ville, but it was impossible to do with the gate closed off and scores of muties living just outside the ville’s walls.

  If his men got hung up trying to fight their way through the gate or over the wall of wrecked vehicles, they would likely be torn apart by the muties, who he had heard would tear a man’s body apart in the search for something he could trade or barter for a small dose of bang.

  Baron Schini had called her sec force to be ready with the smoke signal, but there was no way in at the moment, or at least no way in that wouldn’t cost the sec chief half of his force. He was left with no other choice but to wait for the gate to be opened by someone on the inside.

  ROBARDS STOOD helplessly in front of the line of flame, unable to see where the outlanders had gone with what was now one of the ville’s prize wags.

  Several sec men were trying to put out the fire across the roadway by kicking dirt over the flames, but it was hardly enough to douse the gallons of slow-burning fuel.

  Men were arriving on the scene with shovels and buckets, but even with such firefighting tools, by the time the fire was finally put out the outlanders would be long gone and Robards would have already failed in his first test as baron. His hold on the ville would be tenuous at best in the early days of his reign, and he needed a show of strength to secure his position.

  “You,” he called, catching a young man on his way to fight the fire. If he remembered right, the man’s name was Grayson, the younger brother of one of his more experienced sec men. “Go to the wag pool and tell them to bring me any of the wags that are running.”

  “Yes, sir,” Grayson said, running off toward the wag pool.

  The fire in the street had spread, and now flames were traveling up a set of wires that brought electricity to the upper floors of the baron’s residence. The flames seemed harmless enough, but if they passed an open window and a gust of wind brought the fire in contact with some curtains or some other window dressing, the entire mansion might go up in flames.

  Robards singled out three of his sec men fighting the fire on the street. “You men go back into the baron’s residence and watch that the fire doesn’t get into the building from the street.”

  “Yes, sir,” they answered and headed back inside.

  As he watched the men leave, Robards saw Baron Schini coming out of the mansion. She’d missed the excitement and was now just standing around watching the ville burn.

  There was a hint of a smile on her face.

  “Don’t just stand there,” Robards shouted. “Help us put this fire out!”

  Reluctantly, the baron picked up a shovel and began moving dirt.

  JAK WAS SCREAMING.

  Every muscle in his body was tensed, and he strained against his bindings as if one more hard pull might break him free.

  J.B. had left the wag’s cab and joined Mildred inside the steel box. He was better protected up here and could lay down a better perimeter of defensive fire than he could from inside the cab.

  “Is there anything you can do to keep him quiet?” J.B. asked.

  He’d left the wag’s engine running, fearing that if he shut it off he might never get it started again. But while the wag’s engine made a lot of noise, it was a constant rumble. Jak’s screams on the other hand were high pitched and erratic, and would give away their position inside the building cloud of smoke far more easily than any other noise they could make.

  Besides all that, he was making it hard for the rest of the friends to concentrate on the task of keeping themselves alive.

  “He’s going through withdrawal,” Mildred answered. “He’s just going to have to ride it out.”

  “Can’t scream if he’s unconscious,” J.B. suggested, gesturing with the butt of his Uzi.

  “No, there might be another way.”

  Mildred picked up a spare bit of clothing left over from the sec men’s uniforms and wadded it up in a ball.

  “Hold his mouth open for me.”

  J.B. holstered his weapons and approached Jak. The teenager was snarling and snapping at anything that moved, including J.B.’s hands. He had to be careful not to get bit, almost as if he were trying to catch a snake.

  J.B. hesitated. None of the friend
s had ever hurt one another, and it was strange to be forcing Jak to do something against his will, but it couldn’t be helped.

  If Jak was going to live, if they were all going to live, he would have to be silenced.

  J.B. grabbed Jak’s face with his right hand and his lower jaw with his left and pressed his head firmly against the steel door Jak was lashed to.

  Jak’s mouth opened up.

  Then J.B. lost his grip on the albino teen’s jaw, but a second attempt caught the jawbone solidly, and he was able to keep Jak’s mouth open wide enough.

  Mildred quickly stuffed the balled cloth into Jak’s mouth, careful not to push it too far or to pack the mouth too tightly. When she was done, a torn remnant of the blue cloth hung out of Jak’s mouth like a fabric tongue. He would be uncomfortable for a while, but he wouldn’t be seriously hurt. And, most important of all, he was quiet now.

  Mildred and J.B. returned to scanning their surroundings for the enemy.

  RYAN AND KRYSTY crouched behind the corner of a building across the street from the gate.

  One of the sec men was still in the crow’s nest high above the wall and had his longblaster trained on the approach to the gate. The second sec man was at the gate itself, making sure the heavy wooden timber keeping the door locked from the inside remained in place.

  Doc had left Jak’s Colt Python behind, deciding he would be far more successful approaching the sec men accompanying Eleander unarmed.

  Ryan trusted the old man’s instincts enough to allow him to give his plan a try. But if it didn’t appear to be working, he and Krysty would be taking the sec men out with good old-fashioned blasterfire.

  “The outlanders,” Eleander shouted as she and Doc ran toward the gate.

  The sec man in the crow’s nest moved his long-blaster so that he had the two of them square in his sights.

  Ryan aimed the SIG-Sauer on the crow’s nest and readied his finger on the trigger.

  “Did the outlanders come by here?” she asked the sec man at the gate.

  “Are they on their way?” the sec man asked. “What’s going on over there?”

  Eleander turned to look at the smoke rising up from the fire coming from around the corner. “Oh, that. One of the baron’s stills blew up. Took out two windows and spread fire all over the street.”

  Doc looked up and saw the man in the crow’s nest and instinctively moved Eleander away from the gate and out of his field of fire.

  The sec man followed them.

  “You didn’t see the outlanders come by this way, eh?” Doc said. “I could have sworn I saw one of them scum bastards go down that alley there.”

  “Couldn’t have been,” the sec man said, moving toward the alley for a look. “I’ve been standing here the whole time. I would have seen anyone trying to come by this way.”

  “Better have a look,” Doc said, gesturing toward the alley with a flick of his head.

  The sec man went to take a look.

  Doc unsheathed his sword and ran it through the sec man’s heart.

  The man let out a slight cry, then slumped forward, almost pulling the blade out of Doc’s hands.

  When he was sure the sec man was dead, Doc signaled to Ryan to let him know the job was done.

  Ryan acknowledged the signal by squeezing off a round and catching the sec man in the crow’s nest in the right shoulder. The round didn’t chill the man, but it was enough to knock him out of the crow’s nest and down into the crowd of muties on the other side of the wall.

  If the fall didn’t kill him, the muties would surely tear him apart.

  “Right,” Doc said. “Let us get this gate open so we can get out of here.”

  Eleander moved to the sec man’s station and looked at the ropes that were neatly tacked into place. One of the ropes operated the pulley system that would slide the timber to one side, allowing the gates to be opened.

  But which one was it?

  “I think this is it,” Eleander said.

  With Doc’s help she began to pull on the rope. There was terrific resistance at first, but the more rope they moved the easier it was to pull.

  In seconds the timber began to move, and five pulls later, it was far enough out of the way to let the door crack open.

  “Keep pulling,” Doc shouted.

  “No, leave it like this for now.”

  “But we can’t drive the wag through it.”

  “You get back to the wag,” Eleander commanded. “I’ll open it the rest of the way.”

  “What?”

  “Go!”

  “But if I leave you here, you will never make it to the wag in time. The muties outside the wall will ravage you the moment they break in.”

  Eleander shook her head.

  “But surely you are coming with us. You do want to escape this cursed ville, do you not?”

  Eleander said nothing, and didn’t move. There was a sadness on her face, and a tear was just beginning to leak from the corner of her left eye.

  “What is it my dear?” Doc asked. “What is wrong?”

  “I’m not going with you.”

  “What?”

  “Believe me, I want to, but I can’t.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Robards led his men in the battle against the fire. There were other ways to get to the main gate, but if they let the fire burn freely, it would take out the baron’s residence and a half dozen other buildings on the block, several of them stocked with barrels of alcohol, oils and other flammable materials.

  He had organized a few of his men and other ville residents into a line that was now passing buckets of dirty rainwater that had been collected from the roofs of the buildings inside the ville. The trough of every building in the ville was channeled to a gross of oil cans placed in a twelve-by-twelve square near the center of the ville.

  As the fire raged, buckets were dipped into the barrels and passed along to the end of the line, where the last person threw the water on the fire, then rushed back to the barrels carrying the bucket and took their place at the end of the line. It was a crude fire brigade, but Baron DeMann had practiced it many times because of the volatile nature of his operation. There were dozens of open flames in buildings throughout the ville, and a careless worker could easily end up turning the entire place into a mound of ash.

  And now, DeMann’s thinking was paying big dividends for the new baron. The brigade had succeeded in stopping the fire in front of the baron’s residence from spreading, and was slowly bringing it under control. However, the wag-pool fire was still going strong, and it might be some time before the fire was put out and who knew how far the outlanders might be by then.

  “Where’s the damn bus?” Robards shouted. “Or any other blasted wag.”

  “Would you like me to go find out, sir?” a young sec man in the fire line asked.

  Robards hesitated, then said, “No, I need every man working on the fire now.”

  “But the outlanders?”

  “Fuck the outlanders. We have to save the ville first!”

  And then out of the smoke the bus appeared.

  Its right half was charred black and one of the rear wheels on that side was still smoldering, but it seemed to be running under its own power, and it was no longer on fire. Even the horn still worked, as evidenced by the incessant honking being done by Sec man Grayson behind the wheel.

  “Stop that noise,” Robards snapped. “Why don’t you just shout out, ‘I’m over here, shoot me now!’”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “How well is it running?”

  “Doesn’t have a top gear and we couldn’t refuel it, but it’s running well.”

  “Well enough to get through that wall of fire?” Robards said, gesturing to the flames that still danced across the road.

  “You’re going to drive through that?” Grayson asked.

  Robards drew his blaster and pointed it at the young man’s head. “No, you are.”

  Grayson swallowed once, nodded
and put the vehicle in gear.

  “Not yet, you idiot. Wait till I get some men on board.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Stay here.” Robards went back to the fire. “All of you on this side of the street, get in the bus. We’re going after the outlanders.”

  The sec men on the right of the street dropped their buckets and shovels, then picked up their blasters and ran toward the bus.

  “Hey, what about us?” someone asked from behind him.

  “You stay here and put out this damn fire. If I get back and find the mansion burned down, you’ll all hang for it.”

  Robards started toward the bus when he saw Baron Schini still helping with the fire. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

  “You go. I’ll stay here and help with the fire.”

  Robards didn’t like the setup, but he had no time to argue with the woman. Instead he called over the nearest sec man. “I want you to keep an eye on Baron Schini. If she takes anything, harms anyone or does anything even remotely strange I want you to chill her on the spot.”

  The sec man looked at the visiting baron and smiled. “My pleasure, sir.”

  “All right, then, let’s chill us some outlanders.”

  “THE FIRE’S DYING DOWN,” J.B. said, looking back at the burning roadway behind them. “We need more flame.”

  Much of the fire had gone out and with each second that passed another bucket of water, or shovelful of dirt was dousing the flames and making the road passable again.

  Mildred took the lighter of the two remaining fuel cans and lifted it over the edge of the steel box. J.B. was waiting for the can and took hold of it as soon as he was able.

  “Be careful,” Mildred warned. “They might be able to see you through the flames.”

  J.B. nodded. He ran down the road, staying close to the buildings to the right. When he reached the line of fire, he uncapped the can he was carrying and began spilling fuel across the road.

  The flames immediately doubled in height and intensity.

  A scream could be heard coming from the other side of the wall of fire, probably from a sec man who had been standing too close to the flames.

  When the can was empty, J.B. tossed it into the middle of the road where it would burn and provide an obstacle for whoever would be coming through the flames first.