Black Harvest

by James Axler

  “Best way there is,” Johnson answered. “But we’ll need to be careful. I expect more sec men to be out on the streets.”

  “Keep an eye out,” Ryan said. “Triple alert until we’re out of the ville.”

  They began to move, double-time, Johnson leading the way.

  “You need not worry about me,” Doc said. “I have been scanning the darkness for a sign of Eleander, but so far the gods have not seen it fit to give her up to me.”

  “Doc,” Ryan whispered.

  “Yes, Ryan?”

  Ryan hesitated, then said, “Don’t let your search slow you down.”

  “Ha, mine eyes are as sharp as if they were coupled to the wings of an eagle, and that may give you some insight into how swiftly I will move when the need arises.”

  “That’s great, Doc.”

  INSIDE THE STEEL BOX, Robards felt the chill of the night against his skin.

  His wrists ached as the steel dug into his flesh.

  His muscles burned as they had flexed and contracted long past the point of exhaustion so that he could no longer use them to try and make himself comfortable.

  His joints cracked and popped, moving slightly an inch to the left or right, after hours in the same awkward position.

  His bladder filled and emptied, the contents of it dribbling down his leg.

  His stomach panged with hunger.

  And his heart burned with thoughts of revenge and of taking back the ville, the one he’d worked so hard to prepare for the day that he would make it his own.

  But for now, he was stuck, chained in a steel box, waiting for someone to remember where he was, who he had been, and then come to rescue him from this hell.

  No one was coming.

  It was as if he’d been forgotten.

  There was a storm brewing just outside the box. He could hear it and feel it in the air.

  Something big was going to be happening very soon.

  Real big.

  His only consolation was that it would all be going on out there and he’d be safe inside the box.

  PER JOHNSON, the eldest son of Bennett Johnson, arrived an hour behind the rest of his six other brothers and sisters, an M-1 rocket launcher on his shoulder and a second M-9 in two pieces tucked into the small of his back.

  “Are they back yet?” Per asked his younger sister, Dari.

  “Not yet,” she answered, taking the two pieces of the M-9 and locking them together so that they formed a second firing tube similar to the single-piece M-1. “What took you so long?”

  “I had to make a new fin for the second rocket. I got the shape of it right, but the weight is probably off so this one should only be used at close range, or at a really big target.”

  “Are you going to let me fire it?” Dari asked, smiling.

  “You can fire it, just get Mats to set it up for you and help you aim it, all right?”

  “All right!”

  He gave her the two pieces of the M-9 and a rocket, and sent her off to find her older brother.

  Then he climbed to the top of the metal wall at the point where his father and their guests had entered the ville and begin getting the M-1 ready to be fired if the need arose.

  Personally, Per was hoping that there would be a need. He had lived inside DeMannville for two years and had barely made it out with his life. After just six months he’d been hooked on jolt and was experimenting with nightmare, an especially potent form of dreem. He was about a week or two away from buying a ticket for the last train west when his father found him in a gaudy house and dragged him out of the ville and home again.

  His stepmother, Little Dumpling, his father’s third wife and mother to six of his half brothers and sisters, had cared for him day and night for six weeks until he was able to sleep through the night without screaming for drugs.

  When he came out of the drug-induced haze, he’d thought a week, mebbe a month had passed him by, and had been shocked to hear that he’d been away for more than a year.

  And all because of the ville and the drugs that made it run.

  Well, he wouldn’t mind settling a score with the ville, and a rocket into the baron’s residence seemed as good a way as any.

  He just hoped such action would be necessary.

  BARON SCHINI appeared in the doorway of the baron’s mansion, standing behind the large glass pane that was slightly clouded by the fire from the night before.

  The sky was tinted with a light, reddish orange hue and she was reminded of an old saying her father used to tell her some nights before she went to sleep. He’d say, “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning.”

  Her father hadn’t been a sailor, but he had been on a boat in the ocean once. And the saying never meant much to her since the sky was always one shade of red or another. But now, looking out over the deep, almost purplish red, she had an uneasy feeling about her. As if the shit was going to hit the turbine.

  The pane of glass in front of her suddenly shattered.

  Shards of glass rained down around her as the glass fell away from its frame.

  The baron jumped aside as six more rounds zipped through the empty space the window had been occupying.

  “Viviani!” the baron shouted, taking her snub-nosed .38 Browning from its holster.

  There was no answer over the shots that were coming from across the street.

  The baron crawled over the glass covering the floor, tearing her clothes and cutting her skin. She needed to get outside, behind the barricades set up by her sec men.

  Suddenly a roar of fire erupted from somewhere just in front of her and then there were hands on her arms, lifting her up and guiding her down to the street in front of the residence.

  “What the fuck is going on here?” she said.

  “There’s been resistance to our taking over of the ville.”

  “I told you to wipe out Robards’s sec force.”

  Viviani ducked as a blaster round zinged over their heads. “We must have chilled more than a dozen of the old sec men and another six have joined us.”

  “Then who’s left?”

  “Can’t be more than another five or six sec men.”

  “That’s all.”

  “And people living in the ville…and muties and addicts looking for drugs. A bunch of them swept through the ville last night, took four of our men with them and stole a month’s worth of jolt and dreem from dealers on the east side.”

  “So which are the ones shooting at us?”

  “All of them. Baron’s residence is the only thing worth having right now, so they all want a piece of it.”

  “Well, fuck them all,” the baron said. “It’s mine now.” She rose and began firing her Browning fearlessly at the shapes and shadows across the street.

  When her fire was returned, she ducked back down, a lot of her strength and resolve suddenly gone.

  “Give Sherman and Roy as much extra ammo as they can carry and send them up to the roof of this building. Tell them to take out everyone without a family seal on their arm. If there’s anyone friendly you’d like to see live, give them an armband.”

  Viviani nodded to one of his lieutenants, who would pass the word along to Sherman and Roy.

  “And you head down that street and double back and get ready to take down anyone who runs from Sherman’s and Roy’s fire.”

  Viviani nodded. “Yes, Baron.”

  “This afternoon, I want to drive around this ville in a show of strength. And when that’s over with we’ll chill that family we were talking about. That should quiet things down.”

  Or incite more people to violence, Viviani thought. You had to have strength and control before you could demonstrate it, and an iron fist wasn’t always the best tactic.

  “You hear me?”

  “Yes, Baron,” he said, then headed off to carry out her order.

  BY THE TIME they reached the baron’s residence there was a firefight going on in the street in front of th
e building. The crossfire looked as if it were being weaved by three different parties, none of them able to get the upper hand.

  “Looks like some sort of standoff,” J.B. muttered.

  “Everyone’s dug in,” Ryan commented. “No one’s moving.”

  J.B. removed his fedora and wiped his brow. “What do you say we do?”

  “We either try to slip by or we join the fight,” Ryan said.

  Krysty checked the ammo in her Smith & Wesson, and without looking up from her blaster said. “Not our fight.”

  Johnson shook his head. “Mine, neither. I’m just as happy if they blow themselves all to hell. Easier for me to pick up the brass what’s left over.”

  A blaster round whistled over their heads and slammed into the building behind them, sending bits of rock and brick into the air.

  J.B. shook the dust from his hat. “Which still leaves us with the question of how best to get by them.”

  “I think we hide in plain sight. Join the fight, blend in and slip right on through.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Johnson said.

  “All right then, let’s move.”

  At that moment, the sound of automatic blasterfire opened up from two positions at the top of the baron’s residence.

  “Get down!” Ryan shouted.

  The friends all got close to the ground, as hot lead rained down on them like hailstones.

  When the blasterfire stopped, J.B. asked Ryan, “Got a new plan?”

  “You want to take out those positions?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then the plan’s the same. Only it’s going to take us longer to make it work.”

  “I just hope dear Jak has the time to spare,” Doc said under his breath.

  J.B. looked to Doc as if he were going to tell the old man to shut up, but he just swallowed once and said, “We all do, Doc. We all do.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Bennett Johnson unbuttoned his jacket and began taking the tiny containers of antibodies out of his pockets and distributing them among the rest of the friends.

  “Case I board the last train west instead of going back home,” he said.

  Ryan nodded, stuffing a couple of the containers into the inside pockets of his coat.

  “We’ll be moving in a few minutes. Bennett, you still have most of the medicine, right?”

  Johnson nodded. “I can hand out more—”

  “No,” Ryan cut him off. “You go first. You’ll have the best chance of making it. We owe you that much. You’ve done us a big favor.”

  Johnson nodded in reluctant agreement.

  “J.B. next. Then Doc and Krysty.”

  None of the friends argued the order, knowing Ryan had his reasons, even if they couldn’t figure out what they were.

  The blasterfire had come from the top of the building. Everyone on their side of the street dived for cover, and the shooters on the rooftop had free reign on the entire street below.

  If anything moved, it would be chilled.

  It was amazing how the situation had changed in such a short time. When they’d arrived at the firefight, the danger had been from the crossfire coming from across the street. Now that blasterfire had become negligible in light of the new threat from above. But while the threat was different, the difficulty was basically the same, perhaps now even worse.

  There was a short empty space between their current position and the base of the wall. If they could move through the emptiness in the middle there were plenty of places to find cover at the wall, and the entire climb over the top could be done under some sort of cover. Further to that, any shooter would be wasting ammo on anyone trying to get out over the wall, so just reaching the wall was the big obstacle.

  “Bennett, you ready?” Ryan asked.

  Johnson nodded. “No, but what the hell.”

  “On the count of three, Krysty, J.B. and me—”

  “And I,” Doc corrected.

  “Krysty, J.B. and I will put up cover fire against the positions on the roof. Doc will lay down a bit of cover on the street, just in case they figure out we’re not shooting at them.”

  Johnson took a deep breath.

  “When you get to the other side, you give the medicine to the fastest runner in your family.”

  There was silence among them for several moments.

  “One,” Ryan said. “Two…”

  Johnson started for the wall.

  “Three.”

  Three of the friends unleashed a volley of blasterfire against the rooftop shooters. But instead of having their fire fly harmlessly over the building, they did their best to catch the concrete and metal flashing capping the roof. At least that would suggest to whoever was up there that putting their head over the edge of the rooftop was a bad idea.

  A few of the citizens who’d gotten caught up in the firefight took advantage of the cover fire and began running south.

  One was caught by a round from Doc’s LeMat and knocked off his feet. The other two kept running, making it out of the immediate danger zone alive.

  Their escape prompted Ryan to check on Johnson’s progress.

  He’d reached the wall in one piece. There were two of his family there to receive him. Together they helped him climb the wall.

  Ryan felt a bit of relief wash over him. Jak would be receiving the medicine he needed in short order.

  That part of their mission had been a success.

  Now they had to save their own hides.

  VIVIANI SET UP his forces just inside a pair of storefronts about a block down the street from the baron’s residence.

  The storefronts were on opposite sides of the street, and the broken front windows of each provided perfect cover from anyone running from the fight at the baron’s residence.

  “Be on the lookout,” Viviani warned. “Everybody coming down the street is to be terminated. We’ll wait for them, and if they don’t show we’ll move up toward the baron’s residence.”

  Just then, as if on cue, two people came running in their direction. They were covered in dust and one of them had been hit by blasterfire in the shoulder. They didn’t seem to be sec men, in fact one of them looked to be an old woman.

  Viviani hadn’t expected refugees from the fight, only sec men and rebels.

  “Let them go!” he said.

  “But you just told us to chill anyone—”

  “I know what I said. Let them go!”

  “But—”

  “They’re just running for their lives,” Viviani shouted. “What will we have in this ville if there’s no one left to make it work?”

  The sec man lowered his weapon, considering the sec chief’s wisdom.

  And then two shots burst from the storefront across the street, cutting down the two citizens as they ran.

  Viviani sighed, realizing it was futile to try to spare the innocent.

  “All right, then,” he said. “Chill them all.”

  “YOU READY, J.B.”

  “Gimme the count.”

  “Everyone loaded?”

  In less than a second, Doc and Krysty replied in the affirmative.

  “One…Two…”

  J.B. was gone.

  The friends fired again, but this time with only two blasters on the rooftop positions.

  The rest of the firefight continued unabated, the other forces using the cover fire to try and hit their enemies across the street.

  The crackle of blasterfire was deafening.

  Ryan checked on J.B. and was happy to see that his wiry frame was covering the distance to the wall in even less time than Johnson.

  “That’s good,” Ryan shouted, silencing the friends’ blasters. “Two down, three to go.”

  “But with each one we send over the wall, there’s one less blaster to provide cover fire. I’m afraid your plan will leave you in a rather difficult position, Ryan.”

  “Been in worse,” Ryan replied, replacing the clip on his SIG-Sauer.

  “Yes, but
not many.”

  Ryan had heard enough from the old man. “You’re next, Doc.”

  “It has been several hundred years since I ran sprints for Oxford, but I shall run as best as I am able.”

  “You’ll run like the wind, Doc.”

  “Thank you Miss Wroth, but I imagine like a schoolboy will be a more apt description.”

  “Just get ready, Doc.”

  THE MASS EXODUS of sec men and rebels never materialized.

  After chilling two civilians, Viviani and his men had done nothing but wait.

  After a while Viviani began to fear that there was some sort of escape route through a building or down some alley between his position and the baron’s residence.

  “Let’s move out,” he ordered. “We’ll head toward the baron’s residence and box the bastards in.”

  The sec men left the storefront and began moving up the block.

  DOC WAS PREPARING for his dash to the wall, when blasterfire erupted behind them. Several rounds zipped past Doc’s head, forcing him to jump back and crouch for cover.

  All at once, several of the sec men who had been pinned down by the fire coming from atop the baron’s residence turned and began firing at the new threat behind them.

  And then the shooters on the roof began to pick off these sec men like fish in a barrel.

  “Fireblast!” Ryan muttered under his breath. He had his back pressed hard against an old garbage can and his knees bent to keep his body close to the ground. Hot lead was chipping away at the concrete pole to his left, and every once in a while a round would hit the trash can he was positioned behind.

  “What now?” Krysty asked. She was a few yards away, tucked inside the entrance to a building.

  Ryan didn’t have a plan. They were pinned down on two sides, and any attempt to fire in one direction would leave them exposed to fire from the other. “I’m open to suggestions.”

  “I suggest,” Doc said, “that it is rather ironic that out of all of our group, Jak currently has the best chance of seeing the dawning of the morning sun.”

  “Suggestions that might help us get out of here, Doc.”

  Doc was silent.

  The bullets continued to zip and zing all around them.

  MILDRED PACED back and forth in the small room, listening to Jak’s labored breathing and wondering what sort of difficulties the friends had encountered that would make them take so long.