David Robbins - The Fox Run

Saphire was glancing this way and that, her brunette hair bobbing, dismay plainly etched on her features.

Nadine joined the clustered women, limping painfully.

“Be brave,” she encouraged them. “I survived this. You can too.”

“I meant to ask you,” Jenny said, hoping to divert their attention from the impending tests. “What happened to your right leg?”

Nadine grimaced and jerked her right thumb in Saxon’s direction. “He did it, the slime!”

“What?”

“He wanted information about the Home,” Nadine said wistfully. “I refused, so he tortured me.”

“The prick!” Lea voiced her opinion.

“Indeed,” Nadine agreed. “He broke the bone and it reset improperly. I’ve had this limp ever since.”

“Oh, you poor dear!” Ursa said.

“He wasn’t so smart.” Nadine grinned. “I didn’t tell him everything about the Home. Was he surprised to find so many guns?”

“He mentioned that, yes.” Jenny laughed.

“Good.” Nadine giggled. “I just wish our Warriors had killed all of them.”

“They may yet,” Mary reminded her.

“Do you think Joan reached them?” Nadine asked. Jenny had told her about Joan’s escape the night before.

“If anyone could do it, Joan could,” Jenny assured her.

“It’s so far, though.” Nadine squinted at the morning sun. “The only reason the Trolls waited so long to attack the Home was the distance involved. Too many mutates and other creatures. They usually confine their forays to a twenty- or thirty-mile radius, although sometimes they do make longer trips. Once, years ago, they went north, deep into Canada.”

“Canada?” Jenny wanted to ask further questions, but she was prevented by Saxon’s approach.

“Hope you all had a good rest.” Saxon, in a cheerful mood, laid his expansive right hand on Jenny’s left shoulder. She moved away. “Did you like your morning meal?”

“That slop?” Lea sarcastically cracked. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

“Sorry to hear that. I told them to make an extra effort, to make something you’d like. I’ll need to punish the women who made your meal.”

“No need for that,” Jenny told him. “The meal was fine. We all like rabbit.”

“You lied to me?” Saxon frowned at Lea. “It’s not nice to lie to Saxon.”

“The tests!” one of the Trolls yelled. “The tests!”

Saxon swiveled, scanning the encircling Trolls. “My brothers, it is time! Life to the strong and death to the weak!”

The Trolls responded in chorus: “Life to the strong and death to the weak!” Over and over and over.

Jenny remembered a conversation with Nadine in the early morning hours concerning the origin of the Trolls. Apparently, after Aaron was killed by a mutate, the criminals were left to their own devices. All of them were men. Naturally they wanted women. One of the brightest apparently found a paper Aaron wrote, detailing the wisest course to pursue with respect to mating between the retarded criminals in his charge and possible wives. Aaron knew his charges were genetically inferior. He realized their only hope of sustained existence as a viable community depended on finding women of normal or superior capacity. Aaron never advocated abducting women; he fully expected the criminals to die out in due course.

“You will stand over there,” Saxon told Nadine, pointing to the sidelines.

“I only let you come to show you that Saxon is not all bad. I want another lesson later,” he added as Nadine dutifully shuffled away.

The Trolls were quiet now.

“We begin!” Saxon declared. “Line up here.” He pointed at a wooden stake in the ground near his sandaled feet. All of the Trolls wore sandals constructed from deer hide. The exposed skin was caked with grime, blistered and gouged.

The seven women did as they were ordered.

“See the stake over there?” Saxon indicated another stake imbedded in the dirt twenty-five yards distant. “When I say go, you will run to that stake, around it, and come back to this one. Any questions?”

“What do we win if we’re first?” Lea quipped.

“You stay alive,” Saxon said somberly.

The assembled Trolls were waiting.

“Get set,” Saxon prepared them. “Go!” he shouted.

The women ran, swiftly covering the distance, Mary in the lead. Jenny, Lea, Saphire, and Daffodil in a pack behind her, followed by Ursa and Angela.

As they rounded the far stake, Jenny glanced over her shoulder and saw Angela trip and fall, smashing her elbows as she came down. The Trolls were cheering and boosting their favorites. Jenny ignored them and wheeled, running to Angela and assisting her to stand.

Some of the Trolls began booing.

Saxon advanced across the field.

The other women slowed, apprehensively watching Saxon.

“Are you all right?” Jenny asked Angela.

“I think so,” Angela answered. “My elbows hurt.”

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Saxon queried as he reached them.

“I was only helping…” Jenny turned to explain, completely unprepared for the fist Saxon buried in her stomach. She doubled over, wheezing.

“You don’t help the others!” Saxon leaned over her, glowering. “That’s not the way it works! We only want the best. You let the others worry about how they do, and worry about yourself. Understand?”

Jenny nodded, struggling to control her quaking body.

“Good!” Saxon straightened. “When you’re better, we run the race again. And this time…” He paused to stare at each of the women. “No one helps anyone else.”

After Jenny recovered, Saxon lined them up again. “Remember what I told you,” he growled before starting the race. “Go!”

Angela lost.

Next, the Trolls produced a ten-foot length of stout rope. A woman would grab an end, Saxon would stand in the center of the rope, and the two women would heave and pull until one of them was hauled past Saxon. By elimination, the Trolls determined the relative physical strengths of each woman, from the strongest to the weakest.

Angela was the weakest.

The third test was a series of calisthenics, Saxon simply goading them until they dropped.

Angela dropped first.

“Stay here!” Saxon directed the weary, sweating women.

Jenny, sitting on the ground like the rest, watched him cross the field and consult with a trio of Trolls. She was bothered by her intuition; she felt something dreadful was about to take place.

Saxon returned, smiling, the benevolent despot. “On your feet, now! We’re going for a little walk. We have a surprise for you.”

The Trolls closed in on the women, forming a human barrier, the stench of their collective odor almost overpowering.

“I think I might puke,” Lea announced.

“If you do.” Jenny recommended, “puke on the Trolls.”

Saxon led the crowd across the field, into Fox, past ruined buildings, houses trashed by Trolls seeking plunder or wood for their winter fires, and along remarkably preserved streets. In the decade prior to the Third World War, Fox, like many other rural towns, had experienced an upswelling in population as thousands of city dwellers left the nightmare of urban living for a peaceful rural setting. Crime had shot up astronomically in those last years, citizens had been inordinately taxed, and public services had deteriorated to minimal levels.

A large wooden structure was their destination. Saxon entered through two huge swinging doors, the women close behind him, the argumentative Trolls jostling one another in their eagerness to squeeze inside.

Jenny searched her memory of the books in the Family library, but she could not recall any reference to a building such as this. Rows of bleachers rose along all four walls, practically to the roof. The center of the floor was occupied by a square arena, or pen, with walls ten feet high. Access to this enclosed area was gained via two sturdy gates, one in the north wall and one in the south.