Keeping a grip on the banister, Ryan still almost slipped when he stepped onto the floor, realizing almost too late that the water wasn’t a thin puddle, but more than a foot deep. Worse, the floating solids in the liquid clearly showed it had been used as a makeshift toilet by the poor souls chained to the dirty walls. Then he recalled the light from underneath the guard’s lav, and realized they had done the same.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Mildred whispered, crossing herself.
Ignoring the filth in the water, Ryan stepped into the raw sewage, the material almost cresting the top of his Army boots. “Free them,” he snapped, feeling a red madness fill his mind, and this time he did nothing to stay his temper. This was beyond even the initiation of the cannies. They starved prisoners to make them recruits. This was done purely for sadism. Another item to settle in blood with Overton.
“J.B., open the chains. Doc, Jak, get them upstairs. Krysty, look for Tabitha.”
Slinging his weapon, J.B. sloshed across the horrid water and, fumbling with the keys, unlocked the first person on the wall. He stopped for a moment, thinking the sec man was dead, but then the eyelids fluttered and the head weakly lifted.
“F-fuck you,” the man hoarsely whispered. “Long live Nathan Cawdor.”
The manacles came free with a snap, and J.B. gently pushed the stick figure toward the stairs. “Get going!” he commanded. The Armorer knew there was no time to explain. Just give orders, and make them move. Food and sanity would come later. Quickly, J.B. moved to the next living man and unlocked the manacles, then the next, and the next. There were almost as many dead as there were alive.
Trembling with the effort, the first freed prisoner splashed toward the stairs. Doc assisted the man up the steps, while Dean kept watch in the hallway above.
“Fireblast, I know these men,” Ryan stated, his hands knuckle-white on his blaster as he watched them go by. “He was the leader of the ville sec man. This man was the best hunter we had, that dead one the gatekeeper.”
“Loyalists,” Mildred said, guiding another to the stairs. “Captured men who stayed true to Nathan and wouldn’t bend to the new baron.”
“And this was their reward,” J.B. muttered, freeing another.
The prisoner stumbled and started to fall, but Jak caught the man in his arms and carried him upstairs as if he weighed nothing.
“We can’t set these men loose as a diversion,” Mildred stated, helping a sixth man get free from the shackles.
“They go with Tabitha in the wag,” Ryan replied. “Screw the plan. We’ll find another way to distract the blues.”
One of the sec men going for the stairs fell to his knees into the slimy water, then he suddenly plunged his head into the disgusting liquid and began to slurp greedily.
“Water!” he whispered, raising his dripping face into the air to catch a breath. “Sweet water!”
The rest weakly took up the cry.
In that instant, Ryan fervently wished that the sleeping blue shirts upstairs would awaken and give him something tangible to beat to death with his bare hands. He had seen many horrors in his life surviving Deathlands, but rarely was his heart touched with pity. His red fury changed in that moment into an icy determination, and Ryan silently vowed that Overton would die at any cost. Even his own life.
Sliding an arm under the drinker, J.B. hauled the man to the stairs and pushed him toward the light. “The baron commands you to go and obey the boy upstairs,” he said softly.
“Y-yes, my lord,” the former officer replied, weeping, and he began to crawl up the stairs as if the effort of walking were completely beyond the limits of his physical strength.
A sharp whistle from Krysty cut the terrible moment, and Ryan thankfully sloshed forward through the quagmire. In the rear, an open doorway led to another room a step up from the sewage, the concrete floor dry and only stained from boots coming out of the muck. Mildred was close behind.
The cinder-block walls were green with mildew, the air worse than a freshly opened grave. The sharp tang of the mold almost masked the reek coming from the other area. Several empty tables leaned upright against a wall, the leather straps and dark stains showing their purpose and frequent usage.
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