So instead they parked the wag about a hundred yards from the barn doors with the cannon loaded and the .50 calibers aimed at the open door.
“How many shells left, Doc?” J.B. asked.
“Six,” Doc answered. “Of differing quality from good to questionable.”
“How about the fifties?”
“Six feet of belt on the back,” Dean reported. “Four and a half on the front.”
A noise came from the inside of the barn.
“Hear that?” J.B. asked.
“If I am not mistaken,” Doc said, “that’s the rattle and thrum of a diesel engine, most likely made in the predark city of Detroit, or perhaps one of the smaller villes such as Flint or Pontiac.”
“Diesel, all right. Get ready.”
Doc and Dean manned the fifties. J.B. tightened his grip on the cannon’s trigger.
All at once the door to the barn was filled by a black LAV. It had four large wheels, a small compartment for a crew and a single blaster mounted on a pivot at the top of a conically shaped turret. It weapon was smaller than the 37 mm, and it was also pointed in the wrong direction.
J.B. held back on firing until the LAV approached his line of fire. Leading the target by about a yard, he pulled the trigger and the front wheels of the vehicle were blown off their mounts. The LAV foundered, falling forward like a horse that just had its front legs pulled out from under it. The blaster began to swivel in their direction, but the LAV had come to a stop directly in J.B.’s line of fire. Still, the Armorer turned the wheel of the wag to the left and backed it up about two feet, bringing the LAV’s turret directly in line with the cannon’s barrel.
“Doc, is it loaded?”
In the back of the wag, Doc was busily making sure that the gun was loaded and wouldn’t jam on the next round.
“Doc?”
“Do not wait for me, John Barrymore.”
J.B. pulled the trigger and the cannon thudded again, this time hitting the LAV’s turret and shattering its blaster into a pile of hot steel.
The top of the LAV popped open and sec men began to scramble out. Dean peppered them with .50-caliber fire, chilling two and sending the other running unarmed and empty-handed out of the complex.
“Hot pipe!” Dean exclaimed.
THE DUNGEON was little more than a damp, dark and musty basement. It housed water heaters, and electric heaters to keep the farm buildings warm through the winter, as well as filters and a few tables with seedlings being cultivated under banks of fluorescent lights.
And six women were chained to the cinder-block wall behind them. All appeared to be in their third trimester and ready to give birth at any time.
But unlike the well kept plants being cultivated under the lights, these women had been abandoned in the dark. Jak found a light switch that turned on a single bulb in an old ceiling fixture, and the women cringed under the dim light of the low-wattage light. The floor was cold and wet, stinking of feces and urine, and crawling with bugs that seemed to roam over the women’s bodies with a purpose—as if the living beings were simply part of the terrain.
Not surprising, the bodies of the women were covered with sores and scabs. Their flesh was pale white and pasty in texture, like the skin Jak had seen on hundreds of muties over the years.
And then there were their eyes…
They were full of fear, terrified that they’d be beaten, raped or otherwise abused. If the baron had brought women down to this place to break their spirit and obliterate their will to resist him, he had succeeded magnificently.
These women were waiting to die as much as they were waiting to give birth.
“Which one your sister?” Jak asked.
Clarissa stared at the six women with a confused look on her face. “I’m not sure,” she said, sounding afraid and just a little bit desperate.
Jak wasn’t surprised. These women barely looked human.
“Melanie?”
Jak didn’t wait for one of them to answer. He began unlocking all the women.