“Do it!” a man spat back, pressing his face against the shaking bars. “Chill us, ya fat fool!”
Furious at the open sign of rebellion, Rolph lashed out with the whip, but the knotted length only smacked onto the bars and failed to reach the living cargo within.
“Mutie fucker!” the man screamed. “Drek-eating prick!”
The whip flew again, this time hitting the man across the face. But as he fell backward with a cry, another slave made a desperate grab for the whip, his fingers missing by only inches.
Flicking the whip forward to urge the horses on to greater speed, Rolph started to pepper the cage with short strokes from the whip, driving the slaves back to the rear of the cart. Stupid meat! Would they never learn to obey?
Suddenly alert, Rolph spotted a motion out of the corner of his eye in the dark desert sand. There they were! The pilgrims he had discovered walking along the Mohawk River! They had dropped their backpacks for better speed, but then left the hard dirt road to struggle across the loose sand of the dunes. That made no sense. Then he saw the reason why, as large murky shapes rose from the desert like square-cut mountains. Ruins!
Black dust, if the pilgrims get in there, I’ll never find them again! Rolph thought. And there was no way he would let all of those potential slaves escape, especially the two females. A fortune in brass was getting away from him. Okay, then, he had no choice.
Tying the reins to a wooden peg set in the middle of the seat, Rolph pulled out a heavy crossbow and worked the lever to pull back the drawstring, then notched in an arrow. Rocking to the motion of the bucking wag, the slaver targeted the three running people, adjusted for the wind and bucking cart, then pressed the release lever. The wooden shaft lanced through the darkness and slammed into the back of the child running between the two adults. She threw her arms wide and tumbled to the ground.
“NO!” SHARON SHOUTED, dropping the canteen to dart back to the sprawling girl.
Kneeling alongside the still form, the woman gently turned the child over and burst into tears of relief at the sight of the small chest rising and falling regularly. Alive, Manda was still alive!
“How bad is it?” David demanded, stepping breathless out of the darkness. Fumbling inside his clothing, he produced a rusty revolver and struggled to open the corroded cylinder. It was empty.
“She’s not too hurt,” Sharon replied, lifting the still form. “Look!”
Searching for any live brass in his pockets, David cursed at the sight of the blunt arrow. Filthy stinking slaver wanted them alive. “Can she run?” he snapped.
“I don’t think so,” Sharon muttered, nervously looking into the night. She could hear the rattle of the slave cart, but the desert wind made the noise seem to move about until she wasn’t sure which direction it was coming from. “The arrow broke some ribs.”
“Nuking hell,” David growled, sliding a single live brass round into the old revolver. Out of food, no water, and down to their last three rounds for the blaster, a piece of drek he won in a dice game the previous month. The cylinder wouldn’t rotate anymore, but the former owner swore that blaster could still shoot, as long as you took out the spent brass and inserted a new one into the same hole.
“Here, take this,” David ordered, yanking a bandanna from around his neck and tossing it to his wife. “Stuff this into her mouth and start running. I’ll try to ambush the slaver when he goes after you. Fems are always more valuable than men.”
No matter the age, he added grimly. Three rounds was all he had, one predark, and two hand loads of questionable reliability, but it was better than nothing. The slaver had chosen his targets well. Sharon and Manda knew enough to keep going if he fell, and he would have done the same if Sharon was taken, but neither of them could leave their only child behind alive.
“David, if…if he takes us,” Sharon started, and touched the knife on her hip, asking a silent question.
Forcing back the hammer on the patched blaster, the man gave a quick nod. It would be better to ace the girl rather than doom her to a life in a gaudy house to be the toy of drunken sec men and jolt addicts.
The clatter of the wooden cart was getting louder, and another arrow shot out of the gloom to hum between the two adults. Instantly, Sharon grabbed the little girl in both arms and took off into the dunes.
As the dry breeze blew across his face, David brushed away a tear, watching them disappear. Then he slipped into the scraggly weeds, the ancient revolver cradled to his chest for protection.
Another arrow shot through the night, and the rattling cart came into view. Blind norad, the back was full of people in an iron cage! The bastard had a full cargo, but he wanted more. With his heart pounding, David stayed low in the weeds and waited for a chance to strike back.
LOADING THE CROSSBOW again, Rolph cried out at the unexpected sight of a man rising from the weeds with a blaster in his hands. With no chance to aim properly, the slaver released the blunt arrow just as the revolver went off, throwing out a bright orange tongue of flame.
Something hot and hard slammed into Rolph’s hands and he was thrown backward from the cart. Falling to the ground, the slaver hit the sand hard and had the wind knocked out of him for a moment. Forcing himself to roll out of sight, Rolph moved among the weeds on the other side of the road. The lead had hit the crossbow! He was still alive and unharmed.
The slaves in the cage started cheering as the runaway cart vanished in the gloom, and from out of the swirling dust cloud filling the road came the man, the blaster swinging back and forth as he searched for a target.
Taking advantage of the masking dust, Rolph slipped along a rocky gully to pull a small handblaster out of his shirt. His grandie had called the thing a derringer, but nobody used that predark word anymore. The wep had two barrels, one trigger, and he had to rotate the barrels to use the second round. Bitch of a thing to reload, but it worked like a charm, and should do the job of finishing off this feeb once and for all. Then Rolph would get back on the cart, find the females and make them pay for losing a brass. Oh yes, they’d pay.
High in the sky, the moving clouds briefly parted to admit a wealth of silvery-blue moonlight. The two men jerked at the sight of each other only yards away. Moving fast, Rolph and David aimed their blasters and fired in unison, the double report filling the area with thick acrid smoke from the combined black-powder discharges.
“MORE,” John Rogan ordered, giving a soft burp.
Taking the big man’s dirty plate, Lily bent over the campfire and filled the hubcap with rabbit stew. The elder Rogan took the food without comment, and started eating again with a homemade wooden spoon.
The glen was quiet this night, the only sounds coming from the cook fire and the small waterfall that splashed from the side of a large boulder near a blockhouse. Tall trees and bushes completely encircled the field of green grass, the only break in the thick foliage sealed off with a crude gate of wood, broken glass and barbed wire.
Soon, the other Rogan brothers demanded refills. Lily hastily complied. Aside from being easily twice her size, the brothers were monstrously strong, and utterly ruthless. They gave her little food and beat her from time to time. The combination left the young woman too weak to protest their treatment, much less think about escape. Although she dreamed of it in her sleep. Freedom, sweet freedom, and of course, bloody revenge.
All of the Rogan brothers were dressed in predark combat boots and loose green mil fatigues, with blasters and ammo belts covering their bodies like primitive armor. At the moment, only three of the giants were sitting around the campfire. There was a fourth seat at the fire, but the wooden box was empty. Alan Rogan was off doing a recce for an outlander called Ryan. Lily’s brothers desperately wanted the man, but only because he traveled with some whitehair called Tanner. That was their real goal, and they needed Tanner