When he reached the dungeon, he found a sec man standing guard there.
“Make sure no one comes down this hallway,” the baron ordered. “No slaves, muties, outlanders… Not even any sec men. Understood?”
“Yes, Baron!”
Baron Fox pushed the breeders past.
Farther down the hall and around a corner, the sec man heard a heavy door open, then close, and then the sound of a heavy mechanism locking into place.
And then only silence.
Chapter Forty
The slaves opened the doors to their cabins.
It was happening.
The one-eyed outlander had spread the word that there would be something happening that night, a chance for escape, for freedom, and now it was happening.
There were dead sec men everywhere, falling like ripe fruit at the end of the season. Blasterfire cut them down like axes, and their remades were being scooped up by slaves, the new masters of the farm.
Muties were running through the complex, eating everything in sight, especially uniformed sec men.
It was total chaos, and the slaves were never happier.
Marguerite, a black-haired breeder who had given the baron six offspring in four years, could hardly believe her eyes. Slaves ran from cabin to cabin, some carrying blasters, some with tree branches, all with wild-eyed excitement in their eyes.
“Come look, Joshua,” she said, stepping out of her cabin. “They’re chilling a sec man over there, doing him with his own blaster.”
Joshua, the man Marguerite had been rutting with the past six nights, stepped out of the cabin and joined her outside. About twenty-five yards away, four slaves were kicking and beating a sec man who’d been caught out in the orchards alone. They had shot him in the belly with his remade and were now taking great pleasure in torturing him before letting him die.
“This means we’re free,” Joshua shouted.
Marguerite shook her head and looked away. She was an older woman, well into her thirties, and had been a slave so long she feared her own freedom. Everything had been provided for her in the past, and she’d become comfortable with that. Being free meant fending for herself, feeding herself and finding her own way in life. The thought of it terrified her.
“We can leave here,” Joshua said. “Together. We could go to one of the eastern villes, maybe another barony. Whatever we do, we’ll be doing it together.”
Joshua’s words gave Marguerite confidence, reason to hope.
Just then an arrow caught Joshua in the throat. Great gouts of blood began to pour from the gaping wound, and the fire that had been in his eyes just a moment before began to dim.
Marguerite turned in time to have her face covered in a fine red mist, and her body streaked by the blood that was leaving Joshua’s body like oil from a can.
“What, where?” she asked in confusion.
Joshua fell to the ground.
“Who wants this one?” sec chief Ganley said.
A dozen raiders stood behind him armed with a mix of blasters, bows and pikes.
“I’ll take her,” a young man said, barely out of his teens.
“What’s going on?” Marguerite asked. “Who are you?”
Ganley ignored her questions and pressed on, the rest of the raiders, save one, following him.
“My name’s Matthew,” he said. “I’ve come from Reichel ville, a fishing village on Erie Lake not far from here.”
“What do you want?”
“You,” he said. “We’ve come for breeders, new blood for our dying ville.”
“I can give you offspring,” Marguerite said.
“Good,” Matthew said, leading her into the orchards and the staging area they had set up on the other side of the fence. “I hope you can help me raise them, too.”
Marguerite was confused. “I’m not going to be a slave?”
“No, not a slave. You’re going to be my wife.”
JAK AND CLARISSA passed the nursery and rounded the corner to the dungeon, then stopped and backtracked around the corner again.
A sec man stood guard in front of the door that led to the dungeon. He was armed with a 12-gauge pump-action blaster, and he looked determined not to let anyone get by him.
“Must chill,” Jak said in a whisper.