Jason Frost - Warlord 04 - Prisonland

by Jason Frost - Warlord 04

  His only hope of recapturing even a shred of that life again was to rescue Tim from Fallows. Each day Tim remained with Fallows was dangerous. Not just because of the mercenary lifestyle Fallows lived, but because Fallows’s influence, force of personality, charisma, was so powerful, so hypnotic, that given enough time he could dominate any individual. His sinister charm had almost done so to Eric in ’Nam.

  And now Tim.

  Last time they clashed, Eric had almost freed Tim from Fallows. But that moment of hesitation from Tim, that look of doubt from his own son had been enough to blow the rescue. Eric could still see that alien look in Tim’s face as he imagined what lies Fallows had been drilling into the boy daily.

  Eric swallowed something bitter in his throat as he neared the sleeping bag. His finger tightened against the trigger of the shotgun, but Eric controlled his urge. Dodd had information about Tim’s whereabouts. That was most important. The killing would come later.

  Eric was almost there, just paces from the sleeping bag, when he heard the rustling noise to his right. Then up out of the grass the dark figure leapt with hands flexed into claws. Eric instinctively swung the shotgun around but, remembering Tim, hesitated pulling the trigger. The two bodies collided, somersaulting backward through the cushy grass, down the embankment. Eric reached out and grabbed a handful of hair, yanking the body after him as he slid backward into the cold stream.

  Eric felt the fists hammering at his face as he sank under the water, his cheeks ballooned out with the last gasp of air he’d taken before going under. A hard knee clipped him between the legs and his air exploded out in an eruption of bubbles.

  He let go of the clothing and grabbed a limb, Dodd’s thick and muscular arm he thought, until he realized it wasn’t an arm at all, but a leg, long and slender. Coltish. And the face snarling in the water in front of him was not Dodd at all, but the girl. Duchess.

  Eric wrapped his hands around her upper arms and lifted her out of the water as he stood up. She kicked at him with her bare feet until he dunked her back under the water, holding her head under until he felt some of the fight go out of her. He looked around for Dodd, but realized that if Dodd had been nearby, he would already have shot Eric.

  After half a minute, Eric lifted her out of the water. She sputtered, gasping for air, drooping limply.

  “Had enough?” Eric asked.

  She nodded.

  Eric started to carry her to the bank when she suddenly twisted in his arms, her slick body too slippery to hold, and wrapped her legs around his chest into a scissors lock. She clasped his head between her hands and pulled him toward her, sinking her teeth into his ear.

  Eric cursed aloud, trying to pull her from his ear. No use. Her teeth were sunk deep, gnawing away with ferocity. He clamped his hand around her throat and squeezed the windpipe shut. Within seconds she released his ear and was pulling at his hand. Blood was mottled around her lips and chin from his ear. He dunked her back under the water and held her there, pinning her to the bottom of the stream with his foot while he touched his tender ear. “Christ!” he complained. “What next?”

  When her fists stopped beating at his leg, he waited another ten seconds and hauled her up into the air again. Great gulps of water leaked from her mouth. She convulsed a couple of times then vomited into the stream. Eric held her downstream.

  “More?” he asked with an annoyed frown.

  She shook her head weakly.

  He hefted her up onto the bank and crawled up beside her, still dabbing at his ear. He retrieved the shotgun from the grass and looked at her. Her features were hard to make out in the dark, but beneath the soggy blond hair and smooth freckled skin there was no mistaking the fevered expression burning in her green eyes. Fear and hate. Around her neck were the bruised imprints of the choke collar she still wore like a necklace.

  Eric didn’t have time for this. There was no telling how much of a head start Dodd had on him. He had to get going again. Studebaker and Teasdale had said she didn’t speak, but she could still shake her head yes or no. And point.

  “Which way did Dodd go?”

  The girl looked confused. She sat up, squinted at Eric’s face.

  Eric tried again. “The man who took you. Which way did he go? Point.”

  The girl reached behind her back, up under her sopping T-shirt, and unhooked something from her bra. Eric tensed, his fist ready to swing until he saw she was just bringing out a clip-on case for glasses. She poured water out of the case, removed the pair of sunglasses, and put them on. The combination of dark glasses and dark night forced her to lean even closer to Eric’s face, almost touching, as she peered at him.

  Then she leaned back on her elbows and started laughing. It was a loud crackling laugh, like a crowd of crickets.

  Eric assumed the worst. The combination of losing family, sexual and mental abuse by that outlaw gang, dragged through the wilderness by Dodd, and now nearly drowned by Eric had caused her mental collapse. He felt the burden of his own responsibility toward her breakdown.

  “It’s all right,” he said soothingly, patting her shoulder. “It’s all right.”

  Finally her laughing trickled down to mere chuckling as she turned to him with a smile and said, “Dr. Ravensmith, I presume?”

  * * *

  FIVE

  “You talk?” Eric said.

  “Yeah,” she nodded. “I talk. I also walk, move my head side to side, and if you pull this tab at the back of my neck, I even wet my pants. The perfect Christmas gift for that hard-to-please little girl.”

  “Cute. But how do you know me?”

  “Think back, Dr. Ravensmith. About a day ago. We were at this camp with a bunch of crude scum. There was a poker game. You fell out of a tree. People were killed. Ring a bell?” She plucked a blade of grass and began chewing one end.

  “How’d you like another free trip to the bottom of that stream?”

  “How’d you like to walk funny for a couple days?”

  Eric sighed. “I don’t have time for this.”

  “Hey, mister, I didn’t ask you to come charging in here to try to rescue me. So don’t expect anything in return. You want me, you’re gonna have to take me like those other guys.” She took off her sunglasses and glared into Eric’s face.

  “I don’t want you,” Eric said. “I didn’t come after you, I came after Dodd.”

  “Yeah?” She put her dark glasses back on and studied Eric closer. “Okay. I can buy that. I’m glad, too. I’m glad you weren’t trying to do anything heroic or dumb like that.” She removed her glasses again. “Well, at least you’re honest. Still, if you were smart you would’ve lied, taken credit anyway. Might’ve gotten into my pants that way.”

  “I don’t want into your pants, girl. I’ve got my own.”

  She cracked a cynical smile. “Yeah, sure.”

  Eric didn’t blame her. After what she’d been through she had a right to be suspicious, to be downright hostile. It was the nature of this new world that the strong exploit the weak for whatever gratification they could get.

  “You know my name,” Eric said, “which you could have overheard at camp. But you called me ‘Doctor,’ which no one there did.”

  She fidgeted with the choke collar around her neck.

  “Want me to help you take that off?” Eric offered.

  “No!” She recoiled violently. “I want to keep it. A memento, a reminder of exactly what could happen to me in this place. It keeps me careful.”

  “How do you know me?” Eric pursued.

  “From school. The university.”

  “You weren’t one of my students.” Eric would occasionally forget the names from the parade of hundreds of students he’d taught, embarrassed when one would approach him on campus or in a movie theater and say hello and he couldn’t remember their name. But he remembered faces. Hers was not familiar.

  “No, I wasn’t. But I visited the school and stayed in the dorm with my girlfriend, Tina. I was planning to attend
in the fall. She pointed you out. You were famous on campus. Your scandalous past and all. I think Tina had a crush on you.” She paused, looked at Eric. “You ever fuck your students?”

  “No, but the bulldog mascot and I had an understanding.”

  She laughed. That crackling cricket laugh. “Okay, okay. I’ll stop trying to shock you, Professor.”

  “Eric.”

  “Sure, Eric.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “D.B.”

  “Debbie?”

  “No. D.B. The initials. The name of Holden Caulfield’s older brother in Catcher in the Rye. Didn’t you ever read that book?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “It’s not my real name, just my in-between name.”

  “In-between name?”

  “Yeah. Temporary. Until I come up with a better one.”

  “What’s wrong with the one your parents gave you?”

  Her face went cold and hard. There was a quiver to her lips that she struggled to control. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with it. Only I’m never telling anyone what it is. That’s my name, my secret name, only they would know. If they’re still alive somewhere, they’ll be the only ones who’ll use it. I’ll never tell anyone else what my real name is.” She was silent a moment, then forced a gruff laugh. “Besides, this is a new world. Everyone has a nickname here, a made-up name. Even you. I heard Dodd refer to you as the Warlord. Kinda catchy, huh?”

  “Where is Dodd?”

  “Gone.”

  “Where?”

  She shrugged. “He left me tied up here about five or six hours ago. Took me a while to gnaw through the damn rope.” She flashed her perfect white teeth at Eric. “Over $4,000 worth of orthodontia. Dr. Gruber would be proud of me now, eh? Chewed right through that sucker.”

  “Which direction did Dodd go?”

  D.B. leaned back in the grass, cupping her hands behind her head, and stared into the dark sky. “He sure was scared of you. Tried to act mean and tough, but I could tell. He was terrified you’d catch up to him. I think he was going to try to jump my bones, but he was afraid to take the time. He’d stare at the crossbow of yours as if it was you. I think holding it made him feel safer. But not much. Poor bastard.”

  Eric tried again. “Which way did he go?”

  “You know, he left me tied up knowing I’d get out of it. Told me to take off the moment I broke free and run as fast and far as I could. Told me if you ever caught up, you’d do worse things to me than Krimm and his buddies did. Hell, that didn’t leave much.”

  “He just wanted you to leave another set of tracks for me to follow.”

  “Yeah, I figured. See, he didn’t know that I’d seen you before at the university. Not that that meant much. I’ve met some people since the quakes, doctors and lawyers and ministers, people you’d think could hold themselves together in a crisis. Shit, they’re out there killing and stealing with the rest of them. My dad, he said people’s true nature comes out under stress. Well, he and Mom took care of me and never hurt anyone else doing it.” There was a catch in her voice but she swallowed and toughed it out, changing the subject. “What about Studebaker and Teasdale? Last time I saw, you were tied to a tree.”

  “They felt bad about that. Let me go.”

  “They dead?”

  Eric nodded.

  “Dodd said they’d be. Said you’d talk ’em into letting you free and sooner or later you’d kill both of them.”

  “Speaking of Dodd—”

  “Christ, you got a one-track mind.”

  Eric waited for an answer.

  She didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes. Eric could tell she was gathering her courage. Finally, she sat up and said. “You gotta take me with you.”

  “No.”

  “Then I won’t tell you where he went.”

  “I’ll find it for myself.”

  “Maybe. But he’s pretty careful. I saw him putting down all those false trails back there. What if he shakes you?”

  Eric considered that. He didn’t think Dodd was good enough to shake him entirely. Sure, he could send him down the wrong trail once or twice, but not for long. Eventually, Eric would catch up to him. But time was precious. Every day Tim spent in the company of Fallows was dangerous.

  On the other hand, D.B., or whatever her name was, would only slow him down. He felt sorry for her, even admired the strength with which she’d managed to endure her ordeal, but he had an obligation to Tim, not her. She wasn’t his responsibility. Cruel, but that’s the kind of world it had become. The kind of man he’d become.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “All right then. You take me along, I’ll throw in screwing privileges. Anyway you want it. I think Krimm and company showed me about everything there is, maybe even a couple of things you don’t even know.” She tried to smile seductively; it made her look even younger. Sadder.

  “How old are you, D.B.?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “How old?”

  “Eighteen next month.”

  Eric took a deep breath, spit out the blade of grass he’d been chewing. “I’ll take you as far as I decide I want to take you. The moment I cut you loose, you take off. Agreed?”

  She spit out her blade of grass and grinned. “Yeah, sure. Agreed.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I can tell. Really, I’m very sensitive that way. You’d be surprised.”

  Eric shook his head, but couldn’t keep himself from smiling. “Which way did Dodd go?”

  D.B. put on her dark sunglasses and began walking around the campsite, peering through them at different directions, squinting over them. “My regular glasses were busted,” she explained. “These prescription sunglasses are all I’ve got left. Had them made extra dark because that looked so cool at the beach, you know, with all the guys wearing them that way and all. Only now I’m stuck with the miserable things. Like looking through the bottom of a frying pan.” She stopped, pointed. “He headed that way, but I saw him cut back and go north after a while.”

  North, Eric thought. Asgard. Damn.

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” D.B. asked, rolling up her sleeping bag.

  Eric stood up, his wet pants and shirt plastered coldly to his skin. “We’ll camp here until daylight. Start a fire and dry our clothes. Won’t help us any to catch pneumonia.” He wasn’t worried about himself, having marched through plenty of jungle swamps, but despite her tough talk and hardy fighting, she seemed a bit thin and pale.

  “Dry our clothes, huh?” she said skeptically. “You mean take ’em off, right?”

  “They dry faster that way, yeah.”

  She nodded. “Hey, a deal’s a deal, Professor. No need to go through this bullshit about drying our clothes. Unless it turns you on.” She pulled her T-shirt off and started unfastening her bra.

  “Thanks for the offer,” Eric said, walking away, “but I promised that bulldog I’d be true.” He ignored her and started gathering firewood.

  She shrugged, pulled her T-shirt back on, and began collecting dried branches. “I ought to warn you,” she said.

  “About what? You snore?”

  “Worse,” she said. “I sing.”

  Eric looked at her. “When you sleep?”

  “Oh, no, when I’m awake. It’s just that I do it a lot. Not just sing, but like I’ll even start talking in lyrics. I hope that won’t scare you or anything.”

  “I’ll try to keep my wits.”

  “Good, ’cause it used to freak my parents out a bit. See, I’m gonna be a singer. A professional. Way I figure, see, sooner or later this place is going to settle down some and people are going to want to hear some music again. We can’t get anything on the radio because of that stupid Long Beach Halo, and we don’t have enough electricity to play records, so that leaves it wide open for singers. I could wander from place to place and sing for people and they’d pay me. Like old time, uh, troopdoors.”

  “Troubadours,” Eric
corrected.

  “Right. Those guys. Only thing is, it’s not easy to remember all those lyrics to all those songs, so I have to keep singing them or reciting them, you know, so I don’t forget. Like in that movie with Julie Christie where they kept burning books, but there was this secret society that memorized their favorite books so they wouldn’t be forgotten.”

  “Yeah. Fahreheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.”

  “It was a book too, huh?”

  Eric nodded.

  “Well, then you know what I mean. So when you hear me singing and reciting lyrics and stuff, don’t freak out, okay?”

  “I’ll hide my panic.”

  “Thanks.” She looked at him. “Only thing is, what if Linda Rondstadt’s still around here and she wants to do the same thing? And Joni Mitchell and Phoebe Snow and Laura Brannigan?”

  “Don’t worry,” Eric said with a grin. “They’re getting too old to travel.”

  “Yeah. That’s true.”

  Eric started the fire and arranged their clothing on poles. He sat with a blanket from the bedroll wrapped around him, she sat in the sleeping bag, pretending to be casual, but keeping a wary eye on him, certain he’d make a move for her.

  “You gonna give me one of those guns,” she asked. “To protect myself.”

  “You know how to shoot?”

  “Point and pull the trigger, right?”

  “Something like that. Only it takes a little practice, and we don’t have the ammunition to spare for that. I’ve got something else in mind for you, a different weapon.”

  “Yeah? What?”

  “I’ll show you tomorrow.”

  “It is tomorrow.”

  “Daylight then.”

  “It’s not a bow, is it? I was always terrible with those things. They made us shoot them in gym class and I swear, I nearly stuck Mrs. Gibson in the butt. It better not be a bow.”

  “It’s not a bow.”