Free Mungus: Book 1 by Chad Leito

okay.”
                  “Promise?”
                  “Promise.”
                  When dinner was over I was still hungry.  Hank and Di wasted their extra food in the grass, after they had stuffed themselves, and we walked on.  The bit of bread that I had had for dinner seemed to only make me hungrier, and despite the three tins of water that I had, my mouth was still dry.  The sun was replaced with the moon and soon my eyes adjusted. Di’s black horse walked ahead into the night.
                  It felt like midnight whenever I heard the dogs.  We seemed to be walking straight towards the noise.  Chains were rattling, and we heard snarls and angry barks.  In the distance I could see the flickering of lights and as we got closer I could see the outline of a huge fence.
                  “Welcome to the farm, ladies and gentlemen,” Hank said from behind us.  I could hear the wood of the trailer creaking as it rolled along behind Hank’s horse.
                  The dogs continued to bark and as we got closer I began to make out the shape of a giant fence that bordered the farm.  The fence was all chain link and seemed to rise up fifteen feet in the air.  On the top of the metal border ran a swirl of barbed wire.  The gate was also chain link with metal hinges on both sides. In the middle of the gate, the opening was secured shut with a padlock.  On the inside stood a tall, bald Salyer man in blue jeans. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and his bare torso seemed red in the light of the fire.  I assumed that he was another guard.  On either side of him stood wooden torches that illuminated the metal gate. 
                  The dogs barked and ran up to the chain link fences; they showed white, sharp teeth, and froth dripped off their chins in thick drops.  Their angry barks hurt my ears.  As I looked around, I saw that the farm was surrounded by a series of parallel fences that served as a kind of moat.  Instead of water, there was grass; instead of alligators, there were the dogs.  There were fences that ran perpendicular with the main fences, dividing the fenced areas into sections.  Each fenced off section had three 160 pound dogs inside.  They barked and snarled and jumped at the fence.
                  We came up to the metal gate and the Salyer guard got out his keys and wordlessly opened the gate for us to walk through.
                  “Thanks, Sid,” Di said.  Sid just nodded and we entered through the gate and into the farm.
                  We followed Di and his horse along a dirt road.  With the swinging light of the lantern that hung from a stand on Di’s horse, I saw that on either side of the road tall, green stalks of plants covered the ground.  We walked on under the moon.  To the right, somewhere off in the distance, I saw dim lights from the windows of a great, stone house.  We didn’t go to that house, as I had guessed, but came to a cross roads after walking half a mile into the farm and turned left.  We followed Di and his horse for another ten minutes until we arrived at our stopping point.
    We came to a place in between two rows of 50 small buildings.  Each struct ure had no windows on the front. A lock was on the outside of each wooden door.  Each building stood roughly seven feet tall and had a slanting roof of corrugated metal. Hank undid our handcuffs and I rubbed my sore wrists.  We walked along the cabins until we came to the first open one.  Above the door was a number that said 81.
                  Di rounded up Marcy, Mr. and Mrs. Nelson, and Verne.  “Four to a cabin.  This is where you will be living from here on out.  In you go.”  Hank tossed their luggage into the cabin.
                  The four of them entered and Di locked the door behind them.  Di then led Saul and me over to cabin number 82.  “This is