Black Harvest. James Axler

has some experience as a healer,” Ryan said at last. “Especially with blaster wounds.”

      Robards nodded, a bit reluctantly, and stepped off the wag. He led Jak and Mildred inside one of the stacked steel boxes and the rest of the friends waited several minutes for him to return.

      “Think Jak will be all right?” J.B. asked.

      “Be back good as new with Mildred looking after him,” Ryan answered.

      “Knowing Master Lauren as I do, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he had several women fussing over him by nightfall, each one offering him their virtue more passionately than the one before.”

      Ryan smiled at that.

      The door to the steel box opened and Robards returned to the wag. “He’s in good hands now.”

      Again the wag lurched as it began to move.

      On the left side of the roadway, Ryan noticed a strange sort of paddock area. It was basically an empty space with old oil cans, concrete barricades and several fences serving no apparent purpose scattered across the grounds. It looked like an obstacle course, and Ryan thought it might be used to train the baron’s sec force.

      On one side of the paddock was a high and wide concrete wall that had been pockmarked by blasterfire. Ryan had seen such walls before and knew that they were used mostly for executions. That would explain the darkest stains on the wall, but there were other stains—bright yellows and oranges, and even a few of them green—on the wall and all over the enclosure that defied explanation.

      “What do you make of that?” Ryan asked J.B.

      “Firing squad?”

      “Mebbe, but who bleeds green?”

      The wag began to slow as it approached a brick-and-stucco building that towered three stories over the rest of the surrounding structures. There were plenty of blown-out windows, and large cracks in the walls that ran from the top all the way down to its foundation. The building had obviously survived the shock wave from a big blast miles away that had wiped out the rest of the ville. But while the building was still standing, it looked as if one more good bang would bring the whole thing crashing down. At least that’s the way it looked from the outside. But despite the damage, the building was by far in the best condition of any inside the ville, and it was obviously the place where the baron lived. However, judging by the size of it, there had to be plenty of others who lived inside as well.

      “Last stop,” Robards announced.

      “The baron lives here,” Ryan said.

      “Yes, and so will you for the next few days.”

      The muscles along Ryan’s back tensed at the words. “You make it sound like we’re prisoners.”

      “Not at all,” Robards said. “That’s merely the usual duration of the baron’s hospitality. He grows tired of guests who don’t capture his interest, but I have a feeling your group will be allowed to stay for as long as you like.”

      “When will we meet the baron?” Doc asked.

      “He’s tied up with a business matter at the moment, but he’s assured me that he will be attending a small reception being held in your honor prior to this evening’s dinner.”

      “A reception?” Doc quipped. “And I left my formal dinner jacket at home.”

      Krysty let out a slight laugh.

      “Don’t worry, Doc,” J.B. said. “The food will taste the same.”

      “This way,” Robards said, leading them into the building.

      THE INTERIOR of the steel box was hot and smelled of rust and urine, feces and blood. The sunlight shining in through the open door forced the man chained to one of the walls to squint to protect his eyes.

      Baron DeMann, dressed in an immaculately clean lab coat, entered the steel box and pinched the end of his nose to fight off the stench. “I thought you said this stinkhole was hosed down.”

      “Done last night,” the sec man on the baron’s left said.

      “I want it clean just before I enter, understand?”

      None of the sec men answered him.

      Then one of the men said, “Mebbe he emptied his bowels this morning when we told him you’d be visiting.”

      The rest of the sec men laughed, but the baron wasn’t impressed.

      The laughter quickly died.

      Baron DeMann stopped several feet from where the prisoner was chained up by his arms. They’d hoisted him up onto the wall just high enough so that his feet were off the floor, and his arms had to carry all his body weight. After a few days in that position, his arms had stretched enough for him to get his toes onto the floor, relieving some of the load on his arms, but not the pain.

      The baron looked at the man’s feet touching the floor of the box. “Crank him up another six inches,” he ordered.

      Two sec men turned a winch handle that reeled in several links of chain, lifting the prisoner higher up on the wall.

      The man screamed in pain, but even in the echo-filled steel box, the cry sounded weak and feeble.

      Beaten.

      “Now, you little rad-blasted bag of scum,” the baron began, “have you had the chance to think about what you did?”

      “Been thinking a lot…” the prisoner gasped.

      “Yeah, about what?”

      The prisoner’s head shifted to the right, and he opened his eyes against the invading sunlight. His dry, cracked lips parted, and his tongue appeared over his bottom lip like that of a lizard. He tried to spit at the baron, but his mouth and throat were too dry to produce any moisture.

      The baron just shook his head. “You’ve got a bad attitude, Des.”

      “Fuck you!”

      The baron sighed. “And that disappoints me,” he continued, as if the prisoner wasn’t even there, “because I like you. Anyone who thinks they can get away with skimming jack off the top of my operation has either got the biggest pair of prunes in the entire ville, or he’s the stupidest rad-blasted fuck alive.”

      The prisoner, Des, turned his head to the side, as if he’d heard the baron’s spiel before.

      “I know you’re not stupid, because if you were, that would make me stupid for putting you into a position to rip me off. That means you’ve got to have Grade A plums in that scrotal sack of yours, and I like that.”

      Des said nothing.

      “I like that, but it’s not exactly a good thing for you to have. See, if by now you had told me you were sorry, I would have had to think about forgiving you. And if I’d forgiven you, then mebbe you’d already be dead, instead of hanging around inside this steel box waiting for me to let you die. But since you still haven’t come around to being sorry for what you’ve done, I’ve gotta make an example of you so no other sec men get any bright ideas about trying to cut themselves a piece of my pie.”

      Des tried to spit again, but all that came out of his mouth was dry air that hissed as it passed through his lips.

      “I guess that means you haven’t changed your mind.”

      “Fuck you, you ass…” The man’s words trailed off without being completed.

      “You really want to live, huh? Hang in there as long as you can?” Baron DeMann laughed at that.

      The sec men surrounding him laughed as well.

      “Well, I’m gonna make sure you hang in a long, long time, asswipe.” He turned to the sec man on his right. “Bring it here.”

      The sec man moved forward, carrying a clear