The cry woke Jason, who opened his eyes and looked around in sudden panic. He was bound, bloody, bruised, and tied to a cross in a grove filled with dead people and armed killers. Claudia still hung limp. Maybe dead.

“Ra—Rachael . . . ?” he murmured weakly.

Glory was still smiling at the townies. “You assholes are all from Happy Valley, aren’t you? Yeah, no need to answer. You’re the elitist jerkoffs hiding behind the wall thinking you’re better than everyone. Thinking that you have it all solved, that you own this fucking world. That your shit don’t stink. Well, newsflash, kids . . . as wake up calls go, this one’s going to be a real bitch. Trust me.”

— 31 —: THE SOLDIER AND THE DOG

— 31 —

THE SOLDIER AND THE DOG

In the morning I patrolled the perimeter of the town again and found two more sets of Rover scouts in concealed observation posts. Three Rovers in each. Baskerville wanted to start the day with some red fun, but I told him no. I was still in the intelligence-gathering mode. I had a pretty good read on what the Mad Max crowd had in mind, but I thought it might be useful to verify what Loki and Diver had told me about the residents of Happy Valley.

If the people inside the walls were forcing travelers into slave labor, then I wanted to do something about it. Only problem was that the Rovers I’d interrogated didn’t know if there were any forced workers still inside. Their man, Buckeye, hadn’t filed his last report. If there were no slaves in there, then fuck it. I’d let the Rovers and the elitist pricks inside kill each other and write the whole place off my list.

If.

But I had to find out, and I didn’t want to risk alerting their wall sentries if taking out the Rover teams got loud. Instead, I circled the town until I found a place where I could scale the wall with little or no chance of being seen by Rovers or sentries. I took the grappling hook I’d made from the bike frame, gave Baskerville some commands to stay free and alert and not engage unless attacked. Dogs are smart and if you train them they can understand complex orders. Ask sheep farmers and the show-dog crowd. Ask soldiers and K9 cops. I mean . . . you could have asked them if they were still alive.

Fuck. Sigh. The world really blows.

Point is . . . my dog would be safe. He couldn’t climb the walls anyway.

My line of approach was by crawling through a drainage ditch that took rain runoff to a creek. The thin weeds were tall and blew constantly in any breeze. When it came to security, the residents of this town had their collective heads way up their own asses.