Free Sunspot by James Axler Page A

as deeply suppressed, horrific memories swept over him. Shortly after he’d first arrived in the hellscape, he’d been captured by Baron Jordan Teague and tortured by Cort Strasser, the baron’s head sec man. Strasser, of the skull-like face and skin like tightly stretched parchment, had driven Doc into the baron’s pig sties, and at blasterpoint, before an audience of hooting sec men, forced him to have sexual congress with the sows. The ordeal severely tested Doc’s staying power; Strasser wouldn’t let him leave the pens until he had serviced every single pig. And whenever the mood struck him, Strasser sent Doc back for more.
    In the process, the Oxford-educated doctor of philosophy and science, a man of elevated sensibilities, of moral values, had been brought lower than low. A hundred times he had considered suicide. He had already survived kidnap and torture by the whitecoats, the loss of his family; his brain had been scrambled by consecutive temporal leaps. Despite all he’d suffered, his will to live was indomitable. He was only thankful that his beloved Emily and his dear children couldn’t witness his utter degradation.
    Even years later, the sight of a curly tail made his skin crawl.
    The idea that Young Crad might have willingly engaged in similar activity made Doc’s head reel. Dropping his dinner to the dirt, he turned away from the fire, clapping his hands over his ears to muffle the swineherd’s cries of anguish.

Chapter Seven
    Baron Haldane sat in one of the sunken rear seats of one of Magus’s Humvees with his Remington sawed-off resting across his lap. It was slow going on what was left of the main predark east-west road, old Interstate 10. Haldane reckoned he would have made better time on horseback. The ancient roadbed was split and heaved up in places, and missing altogether in others, which made it impassable for the larger wags. The nimble Humvees scouted out a safe route for the heavier vehicles, sometimes on the highway, sometimes off. The convoy made wide detours around the soft spots, the deep craters and the boulders. Even so, Magus’s vast landship got stuck. Time and again, it had to be towed out of hole of its own making.
    Despite all the stoppages and delays, Steel Eyes hadn’t showed his face once.
    The baron’s three companions in the Humvee were the lowest form of Deathlands road trash. They stank of rancid body oils, spilled beer and diesel fuel. The driver wore a pair of yellow-tinted goggles, the other two wore cracked, wraparound dark sunglasses. All three sported greasy do-rags. The driver’s brown hair was braided into a long ponytail.
    To break the monotony of the snail’s pace journey and to satisfy his own curiosity about the mysteries of Magus, Haldane asked them how they had been recruited into his service.
    The front-seat passenger turned to glare at the baron. “None of your fucking business,” he sibilated through the two-inch gap of his absent, top front teeth.
    The man in the seat beside Haldane wasn’t so touchy about his privacy. His teeth were intact, but mossy-green; the skin of his face was peppered with hundreds of deep pockmarks packed with grime. “I passed out dead drunk in a Siana gaudy,” he said, “and I woke up the next day in the back of a six-by-six with some other hungover coldhearts. Truck crew never said nothing about Magus. They fed us good and we did what we was told to the people we was told to do it to. Had nice new blasters to use on them, too. I didn’t know it all belonged to Magus until a week later when he showed up. By that time, I didn’t care.”
    “Old Steel Eyes saved my skin,” the driver said over his shoulder. “I was all set to be hanged from a lamp post. That’s how they do the deed over in Kanscity. See, I got caught chillin’ this dirt farmer and his family. I didn’t plan no blood bath, I was just tryin’ to get my leg over on the little daughter. Dumb farmer heard her yellin’ for help after I got in