easy when you know how. Just so fucking easy.”
The tiny hamlet of Vienna was deserted, completely void of any type of life, human or animal. “Strange,” Ben muttered, conscious of Gale’s eyes
on his face. “I don’t recall ever seeing anything like this.” He ordered scouts out to give the place a quick once-over.
Gale put her hand on Ben’s thigh. “This place scares me,” she admitted.
Ben, as usual, kept his emotions in close check. At least outwardly. Inside, he felt a little shaky. This place was, he concluded, a place of death-but somehow much different from all the other towns he had seen.
A Rebel jogged toward the pickup, his words breaking into Ben’s deep thoughts. “You gotta see this, General. It’s unreal.”
Ben, with Gale in tow, followed the Rebel on foot to a weather-beaten old frame church. The church had once been painted white. Now the paint was almost gone, the wood rotting from years of abuse from the harsh elements of sun and wind and cold.
“The door is locked, sir. From the inside. I looked through the window around here at the side. But you both better brace yourselves for what you’re about to see. It’s tough, sir.”
The scene grabbed at Ben’s guts. Fifty or so people-or the skeletons of what had once been people-filled the pews. Many of the ladies still had rags of what had been their Sunday hats perched on their white, bony skulls. About half of the worshippers still sat upright, grinning grotesquely and staring through sightless eyeholes at the bones of a man who sat in a chair directly behind the rotting pulpit. He would wait forever to deliver his Sunday sermon.
“Look at the watch on that guy’s … wrist,” the Rebel said, pointing to a nearby skeleton.
Ben rubbed at the dirty windowpane and stared.
The watch was a LCD type and was still silently exhibiting the time in the House of the Lord, to pews full of bones.
“What happened, Ben?” Gale asked in no more than a whisper, almost breathlessly. “I mean, how could this be?”
“I can’t answer that, honey,” Ben said, his eyes still fixed on the scene before him.
“I can,” Lamar Chase said.
“Jesus Christ!” the young Rebel blurted, jumping about a foot off the ground.
“Naturally, he can,” Ben said dryly, but with a grin.
Lamar glanced at the badly shaken young Rebel. “I warned you about keeping late hours, son. Bad on the nerves.”
“Yes, sir,” the young man said, grinning, red-faced with embarrassment.
“It was airborne,” Lamar said. “At least some strains of it.”
“Airborne, Lamar?” Ben said. “The plague?”
“What the hell do you think I’m talking about?” the doctor said. “Gonorrhea? Yes, the plague. The only answer I can give is there must have been several strains of it. Very short-lived. What are you going to do with these … remains?”
“Leave them right where they are,” Ben told him. “I can’t think of a better resting place than this, can you?”
“Yes,” Doctor Chase said with a sour grin. “Don’t die.”
“Little sweetmeat,” Hartline said, stroking the unwilling
flesh of Peggy. His touch made her skin crawl as if covered with thousands of lice. Somewhere in the old warehouse-turned-interrogation-center for the IPF, a human being was wailing in agony. Gender was not identifiable by the hoarse yowlings.
Hartline raised his head at the sounds, a smile on his handsome face.
“That would be Mr. Linderfelt, I should think,” he said. “Would you be at all interested in knowing what is being done to him, sweetmeat?”
“No. I’m sure it’s horrible and perverted. What are you going to do with me, Hartline?”
“Oh my, sweetmeat, that does present a dilemma. Yes, it does. Quite a dilemma. You see, I just haven’t made up my mind as yet. How about you calling the tune, dear.”
“Your humor is sick, Hartline. Just as sick as the rest of you.” She struggled against the leather straps that held her to the operating table. She was naked, her legs spread wide.
Hartline’s right hand was busy between her legs, his middle finger working in and out.
He laughed at her struggles.
“Let me tell you what is being done with Mr. Linderfelt, dear.”
She screamed and fought against the straps. She struggled until her slender body was bathed in sweat, light bronze shining under the harsh lights that hung above her. Hartline stood and watched her, a smile on his lips. She finally ceased her futile writhings and glared up at the mercenary.
“You see, my dear Miss Jones,” he said, returning his hand to its busy work between her legs, “it was I
who finally convinced General Striganov he was making a terrible mistake by sterilizing all the minorities, inferiors that you are. I said to Georgi, “Georgi, just think what we can do for the generations of scientists yet to come. What a contribution we could make in the field of genetics.””
A woman began screaming down the long hall in the sectioned-off warehouse. The woman was howling in pain and fright, begging to someone not to do this to her. To kill her. To please have mercy on her. That this was inhuman. She just could not…
Her scream changed in timbre, ending in a series of heavy, painful grunting sounds.
“Hartline…”
“Be quiet, dear. What is happening to … whatever is that woman’s name? It escapes me at the moment. No matter, as I was saying, it won’t happen to you. You have already been-how to subtly say this-spayed like the dog- bitch you are.”
He threw back his head and howled out his laughter.
Something in the warehouse growled.
Peggy had heard that sound before. The realization of what was taking place in the experiment rooms struck her with all its savagery. “Hartline … you didn’t! I mean, you can’t be serious?”
“Oh, but we are serious, sweetmeat. Really. Look at it this way: We are making real contributions in the field of genetics. It is as I told Georgi: Take the inferior races and start a program of breeding them to the beasts. Male mutant to female human inferior. Female to male human inferior.”
“That is what is currently happening to our Mr. Linderfelt and to Miss, ah, yes, Llado. That is that
greaser’s name. We have to give the human males large injections of aphrodisiac in order for them to cooperate-large doses of Valium work wonders in many cases-and it is really working out well, I believe. Our doctors don’t, as yet, know the gestation period for the female mutants, but it is very fast, we believe. It should produce some interesting offspring, don’t you think, my dear Miss Jones?”
“You’re savages!” Peggy whispered. “Nothing but dirty, filthy monsters.”
Hartline looked hurt. “Oh, not true, not true. If everything works out as planned, we shall have a race of beings with some degree of intelligence, able to perform menial jobs, thus freeing the more intelligent for other work. It’s science, my dear, that’s all.”
He freed her from her bonds and forced her to a low table, strapping her on her belly, legs spread wide, her bare feet on the cold floor, her buttocks elevated. She knew what was in store for her.
“I believe, my dear,” Hartline said, removing his trousers, carefully folding them and hanging them on the back of a chair, “we were in the process of doing something when you turned savage on me. were we not?”
He was naked from the waist down, his penis already swelling in anticipation of the assault.
Peggy did not reply.
She felt grease or oil being spread between the cheeks of her buttocks.
“Yes, we were,” Hartline said, positioning himself.
Peggy began screaming.
By maintaining daily radio contact, Ben learned that Ike’s and Hector’s columns were having as much equipment trouble as his own. Ike had been forced to halt at St. Genevieve in Missouri for major repairs. He reported to Ben that the city contained survivors, but they had, so far, shown no interest or inclination in fighting
