Skydark Spawn

by James Axler

  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.

  “Thank you, Baron,” she said, kissing his foot again with zeal. “Thank you.”

  She was beginning to slobber over his toes. Fox pushed her away with his foot and slid it back into its slipper.

  Next along the wall was an old blond woman who’d lived on the farm for years. She’d been one of his best producers, giving him twins twice and always producing strong, healthy offspring. But after her last—the thirteenth she’d given the farm—she simply stopped producing. Although she kept on rutting, she’d carefully avoided getting heavy. When Fox brought her into his office for an explanation, she’d simply said, “Enough!” Her declaration made Fox laugh. Retirement wasn’t an option for a functioning breeder. A woman bred until she couldn’t anymore, and when she was done, she was sold into slavery or traded for a blaster.

  As Fox approached her, he smiled and said, “And how are we today?”

  She looked up at the baron with an expression of contempt, then lowered her head and spit on his slippers.

  Fox stood there looking at the stain and shook his head. “As charming as ever, I see.”

  “Fuck you!”

  Fox’s fist shot out and caught her in the rig
ht eye. Her head snapped back and slammed against the brick wall she was chained to. Fox stood impassively as she swung her arms and legs to strike back at him, knowing the chains were too short to allow her to touch him. He let her continue her futile attempt to hit him and when she was tired out, he struck her again under the left eye. This time, instead of fighting back, she fell unconscious onto the cold concrete floor.

  Fox reached over and put a hand on her bloated belly. She was six months along and everything seemed to be progressing normally. Her fighting spirit would probably produce a similarly spirited offspring that would net him a top price at auction—a couple of blasters or a few barrels of diesel at the very least. The thought put a smile on the baron’s face.

  He started toward the next breeder when a sec man appeared at the door. It was Kingsley, his number-three sec man after Grundwold and Fillinger.

  “It’s the outlanders, Baron,” Kingsley stated. “They’re approaching from the north, heading toward the farm.”

  “Is Grundwold still following them?”

  “If he is, our lookouts haven’t seen his party.”

  “Good,” Fox said, “then the outlanders probably haven’t noticed them, either.” Grundwold’s men were the best sec men the farm had, and their talent for stealthily following travelers had once again given Fox an advantage over passing travelers. In addition, he had several options as to how to get his hands on the outlander women. “If they approach the front gate looking to trade for food or lodging, let them in and bring them to me. If they pass us by, give them a polite wave and leave them for Grundwold and his men to handle farther down the road.”

  “Yes, Baron,” Kingsley said and was gone.

  AFTER AN HOUR’S WALK along the road, the companions came upon a huge steel fence topped with barbed wire. On the other side stood row upon row of neatly trimmed trees, all covered in green leaves and spotted with a magnificent bounty of ripening fruit.

  The friends stopped on the roadway, admiring the view.

  “Ah.” Doc sighed. “Now, that is what a farm should look like. A virtual cornucopia of all good things to eat.”

  “It looks almost predark,” Mildred commented.

  The farm was indeed well kept, Ryan thought. And the wire fence was an absolute necessity considering the number of hungry muties lurking in the area. Still, something about the fence didn’t feel right to Ryan. He scanned the length that ran parallel to the road and saw something hanging off the fence a few hundred yards south of their position.

  “After that gopher meat, one of those apples would sure taste good,” Dean said. “You think they’d miss any apples if I climbed over the fence and picked us a few.”

  “No,” Ryan commanded. “Don’t go near that fence.”

  “Why, what’s wrong with it?” Krysty asked.

  “Not sure.” Ryan headed south toward the object hanging from the fence. As the friends neared, it became obvious that it was the remains of a mutie. It was facing the fence as if in the middle of a climb with its hands and feet tangled in the steel weave. There was little flesh left on its bones, and what there was had been burned and charred black.

  “An electric fence?” J.B. asked.

  Ryan had never actually seen an electric fence, but he knew they’d existed, especially around military installations in predark times. “That’d be my guess,” he said.

  “If it’s electric, why don’t I hear any hum?” Mildred asked.

  “Maybe it’s not on right now,” J.B. suggested.

  “It would seem to me that such a massive fence would require an equally massive amount of electricity to electrify it,” Doc said. “And since electricity is currently harder to come by than gasoline, where would so much electricity come from?”

  “You’d like a few of those apples, too, wouldn’t you, Doc?” Mildred chided.

  “Look there,” Krysty said, pointing in the direction they had come.

  Ryan turned and saw a couple of muties behind them several hundred yards down the road, as if they’d been following the group. After they’d stopped, the muties moved off the asphalt and were approaching the northern corner of the fence, staring at the fruit on the other side through the heavy steel weave. Then the first mutie suddenly grabbed the fence and started to climb.

  “Nothing happen,” Jak said, as the companions friends moved toward the muties for a closer look.

  The second mutie scrambled up the fence behind the first, but when they were both halfway to the top, Ryan suddenly heard a dull mechanical thrum slowly rising in volume.

  The fence was being charged with electricity.

  When the current reached them, the mutant’s bodies jerked and spasmed wildly, every one of their muscles twitching and writhing uncontrollably. The air was tinged with the sweet and pungent odor of burning flesh and the sound of sizzling meat. Orange-and-blue flames began to shoot out from the hands and feet of the muties, as well as from their other body parts that came in contact with the fence. The muties’ hair and eyebrows burned away like flash powder, the ashes falling to the ground like dirty snow.

  “Why don’t they just let go?” Dean asked.

  “Can’t,” Mildred replied. “Their muscles are in total spasm. They can’t control them to release their hold on the fence.”

  And then the hum suddenly stopped. The muties fell limp against the fence, their burned hands and feet curled around the steel mesh, refusing to let go. Their flesh had developed a hard outer shell and was producing tendrils of acrid gray smoke.

  But the muties were still alive. They were gasping for air and groaning in pain, helpless to free themselves from their agonizingly slow death.

  “It’s a terrible way to be chilled,” Mildred commented. “The electricity isn’t even the thing that kills you. It paralyzes your heart, shuts off your breathing and boils the fat under your skin so you’re cooked to death from the inside out.”

  It was a horrible way to die.

  “Maybe they can turn the power on at will,” Mildred suggested. “And at different sections of the fence, wherever it’s needed.”

  “Or it’s governed by motion sensors, turning on the fence whenever motion’s detected.”

  “Which may or may not mean that someone knows we’re here, people,” Ryan said, knowing he’d just put the friends on triple alert. “But let’s just continue on as if we’ve seen nothing new here.”

  The companions began to move.

  The muties continued to smolder on the fence.

  FARTHER ALONG, the friends saw their first sec man patrolling the inside of the compound. He was armed with a longblaster, and wore a good pair of boots. Behind the sec man, about thirty people worked a row of trees, pulling weeds, trimming branches and picking fruit. They all looked to be healthy and well fed. A few of the women looked to be pregnant, but they were still able to help with the farm work.

  Within a few moments of the friends’ appearance, the first sec man was joined by a second, who came riding up in a small white wag that had an engine that ran without making a sound. There was a heavy blaster set up on a swivel mount on the back of the wag that gave the weapon a 360-degree radius of fire.

  The first sec man waved to the friends as they walked along the outside of the fence. Ryan returned the wave, and the others followed suit. But while the first sec man remained where he was overseeing the workers, the second sec man in the white miniwag matched their pace, following them all the way to the farm’s front gate.

  “Fox Farm,” Mildred read the sign over the double steel gate that served as the farm’s front entrance. There was a kiosk just inside the gate where a sec man was on duty. The mobile sec man pulled up to the gate. He was joined by several others, all carrying blasters of different makes and models, but presumably all in good working order and fully loaded.

  “Greetings, outlanders,” the sec man said, climbing out of the small white wag. “What brings you to Fox Farm?”

  “Just passing through,” Ryan said.

>   “You’re welcome to spend the night here if you like. We have some excellent accommodations.”

  That was out of the question. The electrified fence was probably just as good at keeping people in as it was at keeping things out. If they stepped through the gate, they might never leave.

  “How much?” Mildred asked when Ryan said nothing in response to the sec man’s offer.

  The sec man smiled. “One of your blasters perhaps, or mebbe some ammunition.”

  “Thanks for the offer,” Ryan said. “But we need our blasters and ammo.” He turned to leave.

  “Fair enough,” the sec man said, “but I can’t let you go—”

  The friends all made subtle moves for their blasters.

  “—without making some sort of trade. How about some food? Apples, pears, grapes, beans…I’m sure you have something of value we could exchange.”

  Dean was first, producing an extra pocketknife. Jak searched his pockets and came up with a few rounds that didn’t fit any of the friends’ blasters. Krysty offered up one of her two combs, and Mildred decided she could part with a pair of socks.

  “We travel light,” Ryan said as the others held up the goods for inspection.

  “Not to worry,” the sec man responded. “These are all things we can make use of.” He turned to one of the sec men behind him. “Three bags.”

  The sec man hopped into the white miniwag and drove up to a large building to the left of the gate. In less than a minute he came back with three bags filled with fresh fruit and vegetables.

  “By the horn of the goat Amalthaea,” Doc gasped. “I never thought I’d live to see such a cornucopia such as this.”

  “Fair trade?” the sec man asked.

  It was more than fair, Ryan thought, which made him suspicious. In his experience, all traders always wanted to come out on top in a deal. These people either had far more food than they needed, even for trade, or they were after something else. But judging by how prosperous the farm looked, Ryan decided they could probably afford to be generous with their food—as a sign of goodwill, with an eye toward future trades of more valuable commodities. “Fair trade,” Ryan answered.