Renner Morgan Read Online Free PDF Page B

old ways. He couldn’t even rightly call them old when they’d only fallen apart such a short time ago. But just because everything was changing didn’t mean he had to allow everything to change on his land.
    Here, on his farm, he could keep traditions alive. He could have the one island of civilization in the ocean of lawlessness. McBride thought of the gang of slammers and how out of place they seemed. They said they wanted Quintus, and he considered what they would have done to him. With mob mentality running high, they probably would have chained him up to use him for blood and sex, but McBride wondered how long they would have been happy with that.
    “Probably not long.” Eventually, the slammers would turn to each other if all the thralls were gone. He imagined they would reform society as best they could, but he thought they would always have a deeply buried need to be submissive to another. That would gnaw at them, like an itch so deep no amount of scratching would relieve it. A perfect example was Ollie. In the bedroom with Jonas, Ollie was alpha, but he still enjoyed being submissive to McBride during feedings. By the time the slammers of the world realized their mistake, most of the gentrymen would be long gone.
    “And there won’t be any more being made.” That thought jolted McBride out of his rhythmic inspection and cleaning of the weapons. All the men that walked the surface of the world right now were all the men that were ever going to be. He thought of those huddled in the decanters, waiting for the right time to be born. Would there be anyone there to help them? His stomach clenched at the thought of them slowly drowning in their nutrient-rich fluid.
    McBride was certain that there were clones of him in various stages of development. The McBride line was a stable genetic line that went back for eons. Well, he thought it was stable, but after what he’d learned about his father’s mental illness and his own bouts, he was beginning to wonder if perhaps the whole system had fallen apart. If so, the blame lay clearly with the Genetics Boards and their policies.
    Long ago, when women walked the Earth, procreation was a mixed bag of dominant and recessive genes. People met and bred without knowing the strengths or weaknesses their offspring would have. The Genetics Board had taken all that away. He imagined they had tried to make women, but when they failed, they’d moved on to other methods from cloning to combining the genetic material of two men to produce new strains. Gentrymen were exact clones. Slammers, thralls, and grinders weren’t clones, but they were genetically engineered to fit tightly controlled parameters.
    But now, all that was lost. Or at least it was on Earth. McBride looked out the open door of the shed then up at the sky. Since it was late afternoon, there were no stars out, but he visualized all the planets mankind had colonized. Were they spared the blood madness? Or had a similar virus erupted everywhere simultaneously?
    McBride imagined that since there was no way for him to communicate with any of those worlds, he might never know. Maybe someday, when his world settled down, he might journey into town to the sheriff’s office and see if the equipment still worked. But probably not. As curious as he was, it was still just curiosity. He had far more important things to worry about with just sheer survival hanging over his head. Besides, if there were intact worlds, they’d quickly quarantine Earth so that the disease wouldn’t spread.
    “McBride?”
    He turned and found Ferris at the door. His molten-copper eyes were bright and his once-dirty-blond hair was now much more sun bleached. He looked healthy and happy. For some reason, that made McBride feel better. “What do you need, Ferris?”
    “Jonas sent me over to see if you needed anything.” Ferris looked at the cache of weapons with more fear than curiosity.
    “Let him know I’m fine.” McBride had a feeling that