“What’s out that door?” J.B. demanded, jerking a thumb at the laundry.
Shard blanched. “That goes to the dog kennels. We don’t go there.” He indicated the stairs. “We go down through the mill and out the chute used to dump the ville’s waste into the river.”
“Any guards?”
“A few.”
“Armed?”
“You’ve considered escape before,” Ryan stated.
Shard seemed embarrassed, as if caught in a lie. “Yes, it’s true. At night sometimes, I dreamed of being free,” he admitted sheepishly. “I’m a very bad slave, and wish to leave my masters.”
Ryan slapped him on the back. “Good. That’s halfway to being free. Not surrendering inside yourself.
Shard looked at Ryan with a strange expression, and clutched his rifle more tightly.
Mildred paused their progress. “It would make sense to have the garbage chute near the kennels. So why are we going this way?”
“Safer,” Shard said. “Dogs would tear us apart.”
“And slower,” Ryan countered. “Aren’t they released during an escape?”
“I…well, ah…yes.”
Ryan motioned with his jaw, and J.B. took the point. “Then it’s the one place we won’t find any.”
This was obviously new thinking to Shard, and he was hesitant to relinquish the standing order of “don’t go near the dogs.”
“We’re getting out by going to the center,” J.B. said. He hefted the tommy gun. “They won’t be expecting this.”
The kennels were deserted, the picket-fence enclosures for the dogs containing only the miasma of hundreds of animals. Suddenly, a hound dog with a bandaged paw limped into view from a doghouse.
Ryan leveled his longblaster, but Jak stopped him.
“Not hurt us,” the albino said knowingly. “Just old bitch.”
Ryan relented and the beast watched them passing in silence, then went back to its bed and circled itself a few times before flopping down.
An office converted from a walk-in closet had been recently vacated, the remains of a meal on the desk top still steaming. Everybody grabbed a bite.
On the wall near a centerfold, Dean found an empty gunrack, its locking bar swinging back and forth, keys in the padlock.
“These look familiar,” J.B. muttered, examining the keys. “Yes, exactly like the ones I found on the coldhearts.”
“So?” Krysty asked impatiently, halfway out the door.
The man smiled at her. “So it means one of the coldhearts once worked here in the kennels, and kept the keys.” Taking them off the nail, he slid the most worn one off the ring and swallowed it. “You never know,” he said. “Could be useful”
“Planning on getting caught again?” Mildred asked.
“We must hope for the best,” Doc said, a blaster in each hand, “but prepare for the worst”
Rifle shots sounded somewhere not very distant, and a pack of dogs howled in hot pursuit, the noise trailing off quickly.
“Door,” Ryan said, pointing at J.B., Doc and Krysty.
The rest of the companions stayed in the office, their weapons ready to give protective cover fire for the three as they sprinted down the corridor to the door.
“Locked,” Krysty said.
J.B. tried the keys on the ring, but none of them fit, so he used the lockpick. Turning toward the office, he tapped his chest twice with a closed fist, then gave a thumbs-up. The people at the door used their weapons to track the approach of the five.
“Dean, Jak, check the window,” Ryan ordered, a hand on the latch.
The albino cupped his hands, and Dean stepped into them. He climbed the rough wall as Jak shoved him upward as high as possible. His head made it over the sill, and the boy ducked down to only peek between the. iron bars. Dean then offered a clenched fist, flattened it and pointed at the ground. Jak brought him down.
“Big room ahead of us is clear,” he reported. “Doors to the left, right and straight ahead.”
“Dogs?” Jak asked.
“No sign of them.”
“Good enough.” Wincing with pain, Ryan eased open the door, and they moved through in single file.
“This place is huge,” Dean stated. “What is it used for? Parades, or storage, or something?”
“Not used for anything,” Shard said, stroking his rifle as if it were a rabbit’s foot.