Skydark Spawn. James Axler

a spider. It was gnawing on Doc’s leg, trying to tear away the material of his pants in order to get at the pale white flesh that lay beneath.

      Before the other members of the group could raise their weapons, Ryan had leveled his blaster and squeezed off a single shot that caught the mutie in the shoulder. The impact of the blast rolled the mutie away from Doc’s leg. As the one-eyed man prepared to get off a second shot at the mutie’s skull, a blaster roared on his right.

      A neat black hole appeared in the middle of the mutant’s forehead, and a baseball-sized mass of gray matter and gore exploded out the back of the creature’s skull, taking its miserable life along with it.

      Ryan turned and saw Mildred lower her blaster.

      A little embarrassed by being taken unawares, Doc got to his feet, unsheathed his sword and was about to run the mutie through when Jak’s voice stopped him.

      “More.”

      Ryan looked across the field toward the nearby stand of trees and could see that there were at least half a dozen more of the hungry muties ambling toward them. They were all bone thin, filthy dirty and naked except for a flap of material around their midsections. They moved low to the ground, like spiders, hidden by the grass, but betrayed by it as their bodies pushed the tall grass under and left a trail across the field that any scout could follow.

      “Hold your fire!” Ryan ordered. He had his blaster leveled, but he wasn’t sure that the muties were going to try what the first one had. And as he watched, his instincts turned out to be right. Instead of attacking the members of the group, the half-dozen muties crawled up to their dead brother and immediately set into its body with their teeth and hands. In minutes they were feeding wildly on the carcass, ripping into its flesh and muscles with all the savagery of a pack of starving wolves.

      “Cannies,” Ryan muttered.

      “And crazed ones to boot,” Mildred offered.

      “Looks like they’ll be busy for a while,” Ryan said.

      “So which way do we go?” J.B. asked.

      “Feel anything, lover?” Ryan asked Krysty.

      The fiery-headed woman closed her eyes and concentrated for a moment, trying to see if she could sense any nearby danger. “Can’t feel anything at all.”

      “Okay, then, let’s head up that rise to get the lay of the land. I’ll take point, then Krysty, Jak, Dean, Doc and Mildred. J.B., you cover the rear. Okay, people, let’s go.”

      Chapter Two

      There was fear in her eyes, and Baron Franz Fox liked it. She was terrified of him, afraid of what he might do to her or what he might give others permission to do to her.

      “It’s been five months since your last,” Baron Fox said softly. It was a statement, but both the baron and the woman knew it was intended more as a question. He placed his hands together, the fingertips pressing against each other. “Well, I’m waiting.”

      The woman was in her early forties. She was heavy-set, especially in her hips, and her breasts sagged, which was to be expected after giving birth to five children in the past forty-eight months. She was dressed in a thin white T-shirt that left her big dark nipples clearly visible through the worn cotton fabric. She also wore a pair of old denim shorts and pair of fairly new black Western boots, her reward for delivering a set of twins a couple of terms back. The outfit would have looked good on a woman half her age, but as it was, the clothes looked a lot like the woman wearing them—old, tired and worn-out.

      “I don’t know what’s wrong,” she said, her voice a little breathless and tinged with fear. “I’ve been rutting almost every night.”

      “With who?” the baron asked, walking the length of his office before turning to pace back across the same track of plush red shag. His burgundy bedroom slippers had worn a path in the carpet from years of pacing. When she didn’t answer his question, he came to a stop in front of her and put a hand under her chin. He lifted her head up so that she would have to look him in the eyes when she answered the question. “With who?”

      “Jon,” she replied. “Jonathan Wyndam.”

      “The entire time?”

      She tried to nod, but the baron held her head firmly in place.

      “Has he sired with anyone else in the past five months?” Fox asked his number-one man, Norman Bauer, who was standing quietly off to the side, observing. Bauer was an accountant by trade, and his ability to handle numbers and other statistics had made him invaluable in the successful operation of Fox Farm.

      Bauer opened his ledger, leafed back and forth until he came to the page listing Jonathan Wyndam’s breeding history. “According to the ledger,” Bauer said, “Wyndam’s sired fifteen in the past two years—all norms—but none in the past five months. Either Wyndam has gone sterile, or the bitch is barren.”

      In a flash, Fox pulled the riding crop from a specially designed pocket of his bathrobe and slashed the kneeling woman across the face. “You bitch!” he screamed. “When you knew you weren’t conceiving, why didn’t you turn Wyndam back to stud?”

      An angry red welt appeared on the woman’s left cheek, and beads of blood were beginning to well up through the reddened skin. “He didn’t want—”

      “Don’t fuck with me!” the baron roared, striking her again with the crop, this time with a backhand stroke that put a matching red line on her right cheek.

      She shook her head. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, similar tears of blood leaving red streaks down her cheeks. “He didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay with me. He—”

      Fox raised his hand again. “Don’t even think of saying it.”

      “—loves me,” she said, her face flush with anger. “He loves me and I love—”

      Fox didn’t let her finish. He struck her again and again with the riding crop about the head, neck and shoulders, much harder than before. Her T-shirt shredded and fell from her shoulders, exposing her breasts. Fox slashed at them, too, putting a series of X-like gashes across her chest.

      “I don’t want to hear talk like that…ever!” Fox bellowed. He was in the business of making and trading slaves, of selling babies and love wasn’t allowed. Love destroyed everything, as evidenced by this over-the-hill bitch’s romantic notion of living happily ever after. She’d figured that if she didn’t get heavy she’d be able to spend more nights with Wyndam. She was right, of course, but the arrangement could never last long. At her age, five months without getting heavy and her days as a breeder were over. Same for Wyndam. Five months without siring a child, and he’d be on the next slave convoy out of Fox Farm. Then it would be six months to a year working in some mill or refinery and by then it would be time to board the last train west. And all for some triple-stupe notion like love.

      The woman lay in a crumpled heap at the baron’s feet. He turned to Bauer, who had stood by impassively while Fox had administered the beating. “Take her to the sec men’s lounge. Tell them they can do what they like with her until the next convoy moves out.”

      Bauer nodded. “Any restrictions?”

      Fox shook his head. “No, just that if anyone chills her they’ll have to answer to me.”

      “And what about Wyndam?”

      “Put him in the sec cell overlooking the lounge. Let him watch what happens to lovers on Fox Farm.”

      Bauer gave a little smile. “And after she moves out?”

      “Give him a beating, then put him back in circulation. But keep an eye on him. He might get difficult.”

      Bauer went to the door and summoned a pair of sec men into the room. “Take her to the lounge. And don’t chill her.”

      “All