Black Harvest Read online

  “I guess this is goodbye,” Doc said, rising from his chair. There was disappointment in his voice.

  “Perhaps,” Eleander said, getting to her feet and staggering slightly when she was upright.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Just tired.” She steadied herself by grabbing Doc’s shoulder. “Go now, and tomorrow I’ll cheer you on. My knight in shining armor.”

  Doc smiled at that. “I assure you, I am no knight.”

  “But you are, truly. Or was it someone else who came to the aid of a young damsel and her matron in distress?”

  “Two damsels, my dear lady,” Doc said, bowing slightly and kissing the top of her hand. “Two fine damsels.”

  “Are you coming, Doc?” Krysty asked.

  Doc hesitated.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Every minute will seem an hour.”

  She kissed him on his cheek, then turned away.

  Doc, a smile painted on his face, joined the friends and headed back to his rooms.

  WHEN THE OUTLANDERS were gone, Eleander stumbled toward a chair and fell down into it.

  She was tired, weak and unsure of where she was.

  “You did well,” a voice said.

  It was Sec chief Robards. She could recognize that vile, detestable voice anywhere.

  “I think that old outlander has got eyes for you.”

  She didn’t want to answer, but couldn’t stop herself from saying a few words in Doc’s defense. “He’s kind and polite is all. You could learn a lot from a man like that.”

  The sec chief’s hand rose above his shoulders as if he were going to strike Eleander, but Eleander didn’t flinch.

  “Go ahead,” she said, “beat me here and now, in front of the baron. And see what he thinks.”

  Robards’s hand returned to the table.

  “I know you’ve got plans to overthrow the baron,” she said. “I can see it in your eyes, the way you watch him, envy him, want all that he has. I also know that you’re skimming jack from the operation.” That was a guess, but not an outlandish one, since sec chiefs in DeMannville were notorious for pocketing a little extra jack whenever they had the chance. It was one of the reasons why they never remained sec chiefs for long. The accusation seemed to be bang on as the confident sneer on the sec chief’s face suddenly fell away.

  “But let me tell you, Sec man Robards, it takes more than an iron-hard fist to be a baron. You might take over from him someday, but you won’t last long.”

  Robards just looked at her, wondering how she’d been able to have such insight. Perhaps the combination of drugs, one down, one up, had unlocked a part of her mind, brought thoughts and ideas from deep inside the brain to the forefront. Whatever the reason, it had him worried.

  He wasn’t ready to overthrow Baron DeMann just yet, but he couldn’t afford to let Eleander talk. It would have been better to let her escape with Moira, because now she’d have to be chilled before she had a chance to make trouble for him with the baron.

  “Can I walk you to your room?”

  Robards looked behind him and saw it was Moira, the baron’s mistress.

  “One of my sec men will take her,” he said.

  “You’re welcome to send one along if you like, but I want to talk with my mother about the handsome stranger.”

  “Of course.” The sec chief smiled awkwardly, knowing that crossing the baron’s mistress was a sure way to cause trouble with the baron.

  Mother and daughter left the dining room, arm in arm.

  Robards signaled to one of his sec men. “Follow them. And let me know when Eleander’s alone.”

  The sec man nodded, and hurried to catch up to the two women.

  MILDRED SAT by Jak’s side, watching the albino teenager struggle to get some rest despite the searing pain in his shoulder. He was also a bit feverish, and there was a good chance that the wound had become infected. She didn’t want to give him too much medication, since she couldn’t be sure of its quality, but it was obvious that she had to do something to help Jak.

  She lifted a huge stainless-steel syringe—something that looked as if it had come from Doc’s time—off the tray by Jak’s bed and began filling it with morphine. He could probably use more than the small amount she’d be giving him, but she didn’t want him to become addicted to the drug. She gave him a little more than half of what he could handle.

  She cleaned a spot on his arm, jabbed the needle into his flesh, then slowly depressed the plunger.

  “Will help?” Jak asked through tightly clenched teeth.

  “I’m just giving you something for the pain,” she said. “It might help with your fever, too.”

  Jak nodded.

  In minutes, it was obvious that the medicine was working. Jak lay still, no longer jerking back and forth in fits of pain. His breathing had evened out, too, and it looked as if he were going to fall asleep.

  Mildred remained by his side.

  “Go,” Jak said.

  “What?”

  “Go to J.B.”

  Mildred smiled, caught a little off guard by Jak’s intuition. “I said I would look after you—”

  “No need watch sleep.”

  Mildred considered it. Jak really didn’t need anyone to watch over him. He’d be fine sleeping alone for the next few hours, and the friends were safe as guests in the baron’s home. Besides that, Doc would be joining him in the room soon, so Jak wouldn’t have to be alone. “Well, I could come back and check on you in a few hours, or Doc could watch over you for a while.”

  “Either way,” Jak said. “Not matter. You go. Hello to J.B. for me.”

  “I’ll do that, Jak.”

  “DID YOU HAVE TO invite that bitch to the table?” the woman said as she unbuttoned her serving smock. She had served the party food during the reception, and now she was serving Sec chief Robards as his own personal gaudy slut.

  “One of the outlanders asked for her to join us,” the sec chief replied. “The baron couldn’t refuse the man. He saved the baron’s mistress, after all.”

  “Saved her,” the woman sputtered. “What was she doing outside the ville?”

  “I don’t know,” Robards said, rankled by the question. “Perhaps I should ask a few of my sec men how it was possible that two women were able to get outside the wall unnoticed.”

  The woman was naked now, smiling coyly. “It’s not the fault of any sec men. They’re men after all. If those two slipped out of the ville it’s because that hag fucked a sec man to open the gate.”

  “It’s an interesting theory,” Robards said, rising up from a chair and moving to the woman’s side.

  While she was in the middle of stroking the brush through her hair, the baron grabbed a handful of hair and twisted it around his fingers.

  “Ow, hey!” she screamed.

  “A very interesting theory,” the baron repeated. “How often have you done that yourself?”

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  “How many times have you fucked a sec man to get what you wanted?”

  “Never,” she said. “I’m yours.”

  “My what?”

  “Your own personal slut.”

  “Then how do you know this about Eleander?”

  She didn’t, but she couldn’t back down now. “I’ve heard the rumors, that’s all.”

  He pulled harder on her hair, almost lifting her off the chair. “And if they turn out to be anything more than rumors, and I find out you’re lying to me, I’ll string you up and give you a continuous supply of bang so you’ll be good for nothing except begging in the street. And the baron’s got no use for beggars.”

  Clumps of hair were beginning to come loose in his hands.

  And she was crying now from the pain, tears leaking out from the corners of her eyes.

  Still, she dared not argue with him.

  He lowered her back onto her chair and popped two tiny yellow pills into her mouth.

  She strugg
led at first, but he forced her to swallow them. In minutes she was looking at him with a pair of glassy eyes.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” she said, her voice soft and sultry. “I just don’t like it when other bitches are around. Can I help it if I want you all to myself?”

  “Say what you want about her, but from what Baron DeMann tells me, Moira services him like a champion gaudy slut, which is more than I can say about you.”

  “Oh, but I want to, Sec chief,” she cooed. “You want to try now? C’mon babe, make it with me.” She began crawling across the floor toward him. “Give me all you’ve got.”

  The sec chief smiled.

  “That’s more like it,” he said under his breath. “All you needed was a slight attitude adjustment.”

  MOIRA ACCOMPANIED her mother all the way to her mother’s quarters. As a whitecoat, and mother to one of the baron’s three mistresses, Eleander was given living space that was generous, but kept far away from the baron’s residence.

  “I think I might have said a little too much to Sec chief Robards tonight,” Eleander said, as the fog she’d been under as a result of the drug began to wear off. She was weary, but still able to recollect all that had transpired tonight.

  “Too much, how?” her daughter asked.

  Eleander checked to see that the sec man following them was well behind. “I told him I suspect him of wanting to overthrow the baron.”

  Moira smiled. “What sec chief doesn’t?”

  “I know, but his response was troubling. I think he really is planning something.”

  Moira brought her mother in close. “Mebbe you shouldn’t stay in your own quarters tonight.”

  Eleander glanced back at the sec man. “I think you might be right.”

  RYAN HELD Krysty tightly in his arms. It had been a while since he’d been able to take his time loving her, and after the frenzied passion of their first session following dinner, Ryan now wanted to rediscover his lover’s body slowly.

  His hands roamed leisurely over the sculpted muscles of her shoulders and arms, down the small of her back and over the well-formed mounds of her buttocks. Meanwhile, Krysty was making explorations of her own, caressing Ryan’s thighs, running her fingers through the tightly curled hair on his chest and eventually finding the thick shaft that jutted from the junction of his legs.

  “Oh, lover.” She sighed, contented.

  Ryan took firm hold of Krysty’s hips and brought her closer to him. He wanted to love her slowly, sensually, but his instincts were betraying him. Ryan had learned during his years in the Deathlands to make the most of the moment, because he could never be sure what the future might hold for him. As a result, their lovemaking had always been intense and passionate.

  Then, suddenly, blasterfire erupted somewhere outside.

  Somewhere close.

  In moments, Ryan was on his feet and dressed, the SIG-Sauer in his hand. Krysty followed him outside into the hall where they were met by J.B. and Mildred.

  Shouts and orders were being barked throughout the building.

  “J.B., Mildred,” Ryan said. “Check on Doc and Jak, then meet us outside.” He ran to the end of the hallway where there was a window overlooking the street in front of the building.

  “Escape attempt?” J.B. asked, already on the move.

  Ryan looked out the window and down the street. “Nope. Looks more like a mutie invasion.”

  Chapter Nine

  The invasion turned out to be more like a slaughter.

  And it was over in minutes.

  At the south end of the wall, about a block from the baron’s residence, a group of about two dozen muties were scaling the wall, climbing over the rusting hulks of wags in a suicidal attempt to get inside.

  By the time Ryan and Krysty had reached the wall, several sec men had taken up positions behind buildings and old oil cans scattered in the street, and were busy trying to pick off the invaders as they crawled down the jagged slope of the walls.

  Although a few of the sec men were decent shots, the majority of their blasterfire was missing the mark by a wide margin.

  Ryan and Krysty took cover inside a doorway about twenty yards from the wall and began to fire single shots at the muties that had made the most progress climbing over the wall.

  Ryan chilled the first one, an old man dressed in ragged clothes that hung off his skin and bones like something that was dead. As the old man cried out for “Bang!”, Ryan put a round into his open mouth, sending a chunk of brain matter flying out the back of his head that knocked down the mutie standing behind him.

  Krysty waited for that mutie to get to her feet before putting a round from her Smith & Wesson into the woman’s chest.

  More flowed over the wall.

  The longer the firefight went on, the more erratic the sec men’s shots became until it was taking them four and five rounds to take down a single mutie.

  “Waste of ammo,” J.B. said, as he and Mildred joined Ryan and Krysty on the firing line.

  “Or else it’s bad ammo,” Ryan suggested.

  Mildred began to fire at the oncoming muties and took one mutie out for every round fired.

  “Where’s the sec chief?” Ryan asked.

  “Haven’t seen him,” J.B. answered. “Mebbe this is a regular thing, and he doesn’t need to show up?”

  “It doesn’t make any sense!” Mildred exclaimed, still firing at the muties. “They’re like lemmings.”

  “What?”

  “Lemmings,” she repeated. “Rodents that used to be found in countries like Sweden and Norway. They breed until they run out of food, then they move across country, tearing up everything along the way. When they reach the sea, they just keep on going until they become exhausted from swimming in the water and die…all together.”

  “That sounds crazy,” Krysty said.

  “What else would you call muties who scale a wall only to meet a certain death?” Mildred raised her Czech-built target pistol and took aim at a mutie who had made too much progress while she’d been talking. She squeezed the trigger and hit the mutie in the forehead, snapping its neck and sending the body reeling backward.

  “It’s crazy all right,” Ryan said with a nod. “But nothing in this ville makes much sense.”

  Just then a wag pulled up with Sec chief Robards riding in the back behind the driver. He stood and leveled what looked to be an MP-40 on the gang of muties. It was a remade SMG fashioned out of a combination of solid forgings and stamped steel pieces welded into position.

  Robards began firing, sending 9 mm rounds into the muties at a rate of 500 rpm.

  “Like killing flies with hammers,” Krysty said, between bursts from Robards’s gun.

  “Or he has more ammo than he knows what to do with,” Ryan said.

  “Ammo or brains,” J.B. quipped.

  And then the blasterfire ended.

  The muties were strewed across the ground, or hung up on the wall like dead bodies in a war zone.

  “Secure the outside perimeter of the wall,” Robards shouted. “Check for any stragglers.”

  The sec men fanned out, looking for any muties who’d made it into the ville and gone into hiding.

  Minutes later, the baron arrived on the scene on foot to inspect the carnage. “Well done,” he said.

  “Thank you, sir,” Robards said.

  “No, I’m talking about our guests here,” the baron stated. “I was watching from my balcony and saw how they were chilling these damn muties. One round, one mutie. It’s a lesson I wish a few of your sec men learned before they bankrupt me and this ville.”

  “Yes, sir.” Robards nearly spit the words out of his mouth.

  The baron turned toward Ryan. “You wouldn’t be looking for a job as a sec chief, would you?”

  “Never,” Ryan answered.

  “Somehow I knew you’d say that.” The baron turned and began casually walking back to his residence.

  When the baron was out of earshot, Robards had his driver
ease the wag over to where Ryan stood so he could have a word with him. “Enjoy it while it lasts, outlander.”

  Ryan wanted to ask the sec chief what he’d meant, but the man was gone before he had a chance, his wag sending up a huge plume of dirt as it pulled away.

  The flying dust forced Ryan to close and cover his eye.

  When he opened it the sec chief was gone.

  WHEN THE MUTIES had begun their invasion and the blasterfire had erupted, Robards had held one of his sec men back from the action.

  “The muties,” Upward had said, “they’re breaching the wall!”

  But rather than scramble to seal the breach, the sec chief had grabbed his arm and held it tight. “Relax,” he instructed. “There are more than enough sec men on watch to handle the muties. I’ve got a special job I want you to do for me.”

  And now, with the sound of blasterfire little more than an echo in the distance, Upward was moving slowly down a hallway, careful not to make a sound, or otherwise betray his presence.

  Robards had given Upward a length of steel angle iron, a favorite mutie weapon, and had told him to use it on the troublesome whitecoat named Eleander. He’d told him that the baron had grown tired of her, and today’s suspected escape attempt had been the last straw.

  The baron wanted her gone.

  When Upward had questioned the sec chief about it and asked why the baron wasn’t giving him the order himself, Robards seemed to grow angry. “The baron doesn’t want to alarm his mistress, Eleander’s daughter. If she knows that he’s capable of having her chilled, it would put a strain on their relationship. He wants it to look like an accident. This attempted invasion by the muties is the perfect cover.”

  Upward nodded at that and headed off with the weapon in his hand.

  The story was going to be that one of the muties had escaped the barrage of blasterfire and gotten into the ville. While looking for bang, the mutie came upon Eleander’s room where he chilled her and took her valuables, escaping over another part of the wall. The sec chief even said that he’d be putting torn bits of clothing, and one of Eleander’s valuables, somewhere on the wall to provide further evidence of the story’s truthfulness.