What does Home mean?

Das Sklavenlager: Peterson SFB

I hug Josie then, climbing onto the Hayabusa dual sport conversion, I turn on the cloaking system.

Heading South, I get onto what remains of I-25 toward the old Colorado Springs area.

Sure enough, it took me nearly two hours, due to debris, derelict vehicles, fallen trees and branches.

I kill the engine after parking the bike in a shrubby treeline.

I could smell it.

Rotting bodies.

I turn on the life support and close the faceplate.

Grabbing my BBG 12 gauge, I sling it over my back and quickly realize that it's only got forty-three rounds left.

{I'll need to reload some more ammunition when I get back, Josie.}

{Okay, babe. Be careful.}

{Yes ma'am.}

I brought a revolver that I'd purchased in Denver.

A Taurus Raging Judge XXVIII.

It's a 28 gauge shotshell firing monster of a handgun and, if not for the suit, I'd need both hands to fire it.

Why buy it?

Simple! I have 200 boxes of 28ga shells that I never got around to buying a shotgun for.

With gun manufacturing never having ceased, yet national borders being irrelevant, now, guns from South America flooded in and money flowed out, hence why everyone is back to using gold.

Inflation reached the point of a $100 bill being worth the equivalent of $10.

Don't believe me? A gallon of milk, one hundred years ago, cost $54.78 per gallon.

I walk toward and jump over the high fence.

I jog toward a guard who is making his rounds, and quickly inject him with a mixture of 2ml diphenyl oxalate and 1.5ml 30% hydrogen peroxide from a mixer needle syringe while holding his throat closed with my left arm.

"Yell, shout, scream or make any loud noise and your dead.

Who are you and where can I find the slaves?"

The solution had enough time to affect his mind, given where I'd injected him.

"I'm Billy Watters. They're in the central complex."

"Why are you working as a guard here?"

"My family was killed and I was kidnapped and forced to work here."

"I'll accept that, given that you're literally incapable of lying."

"A young male cougar, do you know anything?"

"Yeah. He was evicted, as they call it, for biting off a guard's finger."

"What did they do to him?"

"Flogged and the same finger was cut off of his dominant hand."

"Okay, what about his parents?"

"They're working in the fields."

"Location."

"The fields are at the intersection of Shunway and Kane."

"That's all I needed.

Thank you."

I extracted the diphenyl oxalate solution and healed what caustic burns it had caused to his nervous system.

{Holly, come take this man to the lake. Then, return home.}