Jason Frost - Warlord 04 - Prisonland

by Jason Frost - Warlord 04

  “What is?”

  He grinned. “Grasshoppers.”

  She made a sour face. “Get serious.”

  “Trust me.”

  Within hours they were snacking on roasted grasshoppers.

  “How are they?” Eric asked.

  He could see she was forcing them down, holding her breath as she chewed, but determined not to let Eric know how she really felt.

  “Kinda tasty,” she said cheerfully. She started hopping about the fire like a grasshopper.

  Eric sat back and laughed and soon she was laughing and hopping until the laughter made her sit back down again.

  D.B. stared off into the distance. “I always thought it would be the Russians.”

  “What?”

  “You know, I figured if people were ever forced to live like this, burning bodies and keeping constant watch, it would be because of the Russians. World War III. I pictured all of the American survivors banding together fighting against Russian invaders. Hit and run stuff.”

  “Guerrillas.”

  “Yeah, guerrillas. I never figured we’d be hunting each other down.”

  Eric remembered his own students discussing the Soviet threat with that same naive zeal that unwary Americans had once used in the early days of Vietnam. Communists had once again become the clear and present danger, the Enemy. And with that shift in attitude had come a new fervor to fight. Surely, the Soviets were not our friends, an enemy to be watched, a system to be hated. But it allowed us to be too easy on ourselves, ignore the enemy we had to fear most: the dark side of each of us that lurks beneath the icy surface. And in a split second of thoughtless venal action, strips us bare of everything we once were. The enemy here wasn’t Russians or Cubans or Chinese. It was the beast within.

  “We have met the enemy,” Eric said, “and it is us.”

  “Huh?”

  “From a cartoon. Pogo.”

  “Swamp creatures, right?”

  He nodded.

  “I didn’t know cartoons could be so profound,” D.B. said. “Except maybe Doonesbury or Peanuts.”

  Eric began kicking dirt into the small campfire.

  “I learned a lot since I hooked up with you, R.R. History, weapons, tracking, medicine—”

  “Cartoons.”

  She laughed. “Yeah, cartoons. It’s neat stuff. Makes me kinda sorry I never made it to the university. Guess I’ll never get an education now.”

  Eric had been around students her age long enough to know when they were leading up to something, trying to be subtle, but still testing the waters. He waited for the bomb.

  “Except with tutoring. Like you’ve been doing.”

  There it was. She was talking about the future. Traveling together, a team, partners. Eric liked her, but he had Tim to think about. Going after Fallows was nothing short of a suicide mission. He couldn’t risk her life taking her along. Okay, even more important, he couldn’t risk having her inexperience ruin any chance he might have of rescuing Tim.

  “Some of the camps I’ve seen have schools,” Eric said. Actually, he’d seen one school in a camp that was nothing more than a few families living in a church. The school was for their tots.

  D.B. stared at him as if she could read his thoughts. “Yeah, sure.”

  Eric hefted his pack onto his shoulders. “Let’s go.”

  “What’s the hurry?” She stood in front of him and stripped off her T-shirt. Her skin was smooth and pale, freckles patterned on her chest like raindrops on a window. Her breasts were small, the nipples supple and bright. She stood with hands on hips, an earnest expression on her face. “We could make it if you want.”

  Eric sighed. “D.B.—”

  “It doesn’t have to mean anything. And I know you aren’t taking advantage of me or anything. Hell, you coulda done that before, I wouldn’t have stopped you. And you aren’t gonna mess up my head; I had sex before any of this happened. First time the night of the junior prom. And a couple times since then. I want to, I really do.”

  Eric’s heart ached for her. He almost agreed just not to hurt her. But he couldn’t. Not because he had any exaggerated ideals of morality. He knew what kind of man he’d become in this world. But there had to be limits, boundaries fought to maintain. Something of what once was had to remain or survival meant nothing. In a month, a week, a day, he might change his mind, take her to bed—he’d been tempted the past few days—but it was important to hold onto those elusive values as long as possible. Even when the reasons seemed muddied. Perhaps then most of all.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  The closer they got to San Francisco, the more people they had to avoid. Some of the land was swampy from the ocean washing in. Apparently parts of the land had sunk to almost sea level. Not as bad as Los Angeles, Eric thought, which was almost completely underwater, people living on the top floors of the skyscrapers that poked up out of the water.

  Still, Eric and D.B. managed to keep out of sight as they sneaked past encampments and roving bandits. They also came across a lot more bodies, a few the result of murder or starvation, but most the result of the plague. All had been picked clean.

  “Are you sure Dodd would risk coming up here?” D.B. asked.

  “He’d want to unload that stuff he picked up. And if he’s on the outs with Fallows, he wouldn’t be anxious to be in the same vicinity without me to bargain with. Also, Asgard is supposed to be the wealthiest most powerful settlement in the area. That means if there are any antibiotics, they’ll have them.”

  “Antibiotics? Like a vaccine for the plague?”

  “Treatment, yes.”

  That night, Eric left D.B. hidden in a turned over Dodge van in a supermarket parking lot. He gave her the shotgun and a revolver with two bullets. The revolver with three bullets he kept for himself.

  He roamed through the night searching out small gatherings, listening to their conversations as they huddled around fires, clutching their crude weapons protectively to their chests, keeping a watch on the night and each other. It took most of the night and some piecing together before he found out what he wanted to know.

  “What’s up?” D.B. asked when he lifted her out of the van.

  “Asgard. It’s perched right on the edge of the water. What used to be Fisherman’s Wharf is now Asgard Beach. Apparently this guy Thor rules the whole place, about twenty square blocks.”

  “Who is this guy, uh, Thorn?”

  “Thor. A Norse god they called the thunderer. People used to think he caused thunder when he threw his magic hammer. He was the son of the head honcho god, Odin, and considered the strongest of all gods. His name is the basis for Thursday.”

  “Shit. You think Thor’s this guy’s real name?”

  “What do you think?”

  She grinned. “Yeah, guess not. Looks like everybody’s trying to be someone else around here. What’s with this Ass Guard stuff.”

  Eric laughed. “Asgard. The city in Norse mythology where all the gods lived.”

  “Jeez. So this guy Thor thought all this up himself, huh? Pretty slick. Must be real smart, like you.”

  “Maybe. He’s also a convicted murderer who was awaiting the death penalty up at San Quentin.”

  She gave a low whistle. “Fun guy.”

  “Also, I found out they’ve got plenty of food and supplies, only they won’t let anyone into the city unless they are inoculated with antibiotics.”

  “How would they know?”

  “They administer it themselves.”

  “Oh, I get it. You gotta buy it from them, right?”

  “Right. They’ve got all the antibiotics they could carry from the hospitals they raided. I’m positive that’s where Dodd would have gone. He must’ve found some bodies too and figured the safest thing to do was come here. He certainly had enough goods to trade.”

  “So let’s go in and find him.”

  “Not so easy. We don’t have anything worth trading. These guns won’t get us more than a couple meal
s at best.”

  D.B. thought about it a moment then smiled. “We got something.”

  Eric looked at her. “What?”

  She hooked a finger through the ring of her choke collar and pulled. “Arf, arf.”

  * * *

  SEVEN

  “So far you ain’t showed me shit, sport.” The lanky man with the bandanna twisted into a headband around his shoulder-length hair sat on the hood of the gutted Rolls Royce. He was dragging the barrel of his .32 H & R Model 632 across the dusty hood, scratching white lines into the expensive black finish playing tic-tac-toe. “What do you think, Hanks?”

  Hanks sprawled across the roof of the car, shirtless, his eyes closed, his Winchester rifle lying idly across his chest. His skin was bronzed except for an occasional white scar that sliced across his chest. Eric recognized them as old knife wounds made at different times. “Gimme a break, Grub. I’m working on my tan. Just get rid of him.”

  “You heard him,” Grub said from behind his mirrored aviator sunglasses. He plowed up another furrow of black lacquer from the Rolls. The pattern resembled the knife scars on his friend’s chest. “Now, shag your ass outta here.”

  Eric stared at the two men. The car they were lolling on was only one in an endless barricade of vehicles—garbage trucks, trailers, ice cream trucks — shouldered next to each other down the entire street and further. Last night, Eric and D.B. had worked their way through the heaps of rubble that made up most of San Francisco, avoiding the campfires and marauders. They’d come across more dead bodies, heard the wailing of the dying. Some of the fires were pyres, bodies stacked ten deep, fifteen abreast, set afire to stop the spread of the plague. When they’d hit this wall, they’d followed it down Bay Street to Van Ness and back again to Jones. It was like a giant horseshoe bracketing a few square city blocks on the ocean, including the National Maritime Museum, Fisherman’s Wharf, Ghiradelli Square, and The Cannery.

  There was no way in except the few guard posts like this, with armed men allowing entry only to those who could afford the shots of tetracycline. Apparently some had tried to enter by other means, climbing over a school bus or crawling under a truck. Their headless bodies remained sprawled where they’d been shot. On crude wooden poles next to each spot where an intruder had been killed, was the head from that corpse, stuck on the sharpened end, dried and withered from the sun, the eyes pecked out by birds.

  “Beats a Beware of Dog sign,” Grub chuckled, watching Eric’s eyes staring at the dozens of poles. Some of the poles had more than one head stuck on them, like ancient totem poles. Grub called them shish-kebobs.

  “Guess not many get in, huh?”

  “Just them that can afford it. We’re kinda exclusive that way. We looted every hospital and clinic and pharmacy in the whole fuckin’ city. Out there people are kicking off from plague like junkies. In here, we’re sitting pretty.” Behind him dozens of armed men wandered the streets as if it were a normal shopping weekday in San Francisco’s popular tourist spot. Except for the crumbled buildings and buckled streets.

  “What about the herbs?” Eric bargained. “They’re worth something. Enough to let me in.”

  “These fuckin’ weeds’?” Grub hopped off the hood of the car and removed his sunglasses. Three blue tear drops were tattooed on his left cheek, right under the eye. It was a prison tattoo, clumsily done with ink syphoned from a pen and a sewing needle. He poked through the pound or so of shredded plant that Eric had displayed by unknotting the T-shirt he carried it in hobo-style. “We don’t need no witchdoctor shit, man. We got fuckin’ tetracycline inside. Enough to keep the plague in some other bozo’s pants. You follow me, ace? You want inside Asgard you gotta be inoculated first. You want inoculated, you gotta show something we want. Gasoline, guns, booze, batteries. Drugs.”

  “Yeah, drugs,” Hanks said from atop the roof, lifting his head, squinting. “And we ain’t talking aspirin, buck. We’re talking good shit. Got any yellow jackets, redbirds, peaches, dexies, footballs, black beauties, purple hearts, tooies? Maybe a sniff of coke. Hell, even grass. I ain’t smoked any shit in months. And booze, let me tell you, ain’t no substitute, ya hear what I’m saying?”

  “Amen,” Grub nodded.

  “Make your own alcohol?” Eric asked.

  “Yeah,” Grub said, “we got a couple stills pumping.”

  Hanks snorted. “We make it and we drink it but we don’t much like it.”

  “Then maybe you should take a closer look at what I have.” Eric nudged the T-shirt on the ground with his shoe.

  Hanks laughed. “Listen, man, we’ve smoked and snorted just about everything that grows, including rose bushes we tore from the gardens around the damned library. Ever smoke a fuckin’ rose bush? Like drinking some old lady’s perfume. Shit.”

  Grub and Hanks laughed.

  “I guarantee this works,” Eric said calmly. “You smoke it, you’ll be riding free.”

  Hanks sat up again, interested. Grub removed his sunglasses again.

  “What is that stuff?” Hanks said, sliding off the roof of the Rolls. A film of sweat made his torso glisten, the thin white scars wet like the trails of snails.

  “This and that,” Eric said vaguely.

  Grub poked the barrel of his .32 against Eric’s chest. “How about some of this, sport?”

  Eric ignored him. “This is only a sample. There’s more hidden.”

  Hanks stooped down, pinched some of the ground plants between his fingers. He sniffed it, dabbed some on his tongue. He frowned. “Yuck. I wouldn’t smoke this shit.”

  Eric shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’ll sell it somewhere else. Maybe the guards at a post down the line might be more interested.”

  Grub and Hanks exchanged glances.

  “Hold on, sport,” Grub said. “How about a taste, a few tokes just to check it out?”

  Hanks said, “Yeah, a taste, like them little spoons of ice cream they give ya at Baskin-Robbins.”

  Eric pretended to think it over. “Sure. Got a pipe or some paper?”

  “I’ll get some,” Grub said and ran off.

  “How many people you got inside?” Eric asked while they waited.

  “Dunno,” Hanks said. He was eyeing Eric’s minced plant with a hopeful longing. “Nobody’s counted. Maybe five hundred permanent. A couple hundred more come here for the dealing or for the antibiotics.”

  “Nobody inside has it?”

  “Nope. Clean as a cat’s ass. We got our own doctor and everything.”

  “And Thor runs the place.”

  “Yeah,” Hanks said, but Eric could see him stiffen slightly at the name, as if he feared mentioning it might bring him, like some invocation. Apparently, Thor controlled these men very tightly. Considering the kind of men they were—convicts, murderers, thieves, pirates—that said a lot about Thor’s own power. Eric hoped to avoid him.

  “Friend of mine told me about this place. Name’s Dodd. Probably came through here a few days ago.”

  Hanks shrugged. “Lots of people come through, either here or at one of the other gates.”

  “Big man. Black beard. Carries a black crossbow with brass plating.”

  “Oh yeah. I seen him around camp. I tried to buy that bow. Real beauty.”

  Eric felt his heart thumping. “He still here?”

  “Can’t say. They come and go, you know?”

  Grub ran up, jumping up onto the Rolls’ hood, denting the black metal. He leaped off next to Hanks. “Got some paper from Timmons. Wanted to know what we was gonna do with it.”

  “What ya tell him?” Hanks asked.

  “Nothing. Just that you and me was experimenting with something we found growing.” Grub turned to Eric. “Timmons been trying to grow maryjane for months, ever since our stock of drugs run out. So far a big zero. Weeds and bugs is all.”

  Hanks and Grub jeach rolled a cigarette from Eric’s sample. Grub lighted both cigarettes and they began to take deep long drags.

  “Jesus,” Grub cough
ed, making a sour face. “I’m not sure it’s worth getting high if you have to taste this.”

  Eric waited. Within minutes both men’s faces relaxed as they puffed hungrily on their joints.

  “Shit ain’t bad,” Grub said. “What’d you say this was?”

  “I didn’t,” Eric said.

  Grub grinned. “Hadda try, sport.”

  “How much more you got?” Hanks said, huffing a lungful deep into his chest.

  “Plenty. Some here. More further away.”

  Hanks grabbed Grub’s arm and pulled him over to the side of the Rolls. They talked briefly then returned to Eric.

  “Okay, sport,” Grub said. “We’ll take this for your entrance fee. It’ll take a like amount to get you your tetracycline inside.”

  “Agreed,” Eric said. He gathered the corners of the T-shirt and knotted them. He handed the bundle to Hanks.

  “Go and get the rest of your stash.”

  “No need.” Eric whistled loudly, a coded series of sounds. Within seconds, D.B. came running from across the street, dodging debris and hopping over huge chunks of concrete.

  “Jesus,” Grub said, eyes wide.

  D.B. ran up to Eric and handed him a canteen filled with the plant. Eric took it, then grabbed the leash, jerking it until the choke collar pinched her throat, causing her to stumble a few steps forward.

  “When I whistle,” he yelled, “you come immediately.”

  She lowered her head.

  “Fuck, man,” Hanks said. “Why didn’t you just give her to us. You’d have gotten in and your shots, no sweat.”

  “I need her to trade for stuff once I’m inside.”

  “Yeah, man,” Grub said, giving Eric an appreciative nod, “You’ll fit right in around here. Welcome to Asgard. City of the gods.”

  * * *

  EIGHT

  “How much you want for her?” Eric considered. “Make me an offer.” The fat man was naturally bald on top, but the sides and back he’d shaved himself. Black stubble dotted his head like pencil points. Curving down the shiny bald pate was a tattooed shark, its mouth open wide, its rows of teeth dipping down onto the forehead. The fat man’s own teeth were scattered haphazardly in his mouth, separated by wide expanses of toothless gum. That and the scars on the lips indicated something hard had once smashed his mouth. “I got a dog,” the fat man said. “Doberman. Good watchdog when you’re outside.” The man gave a leering wink. “And it’s a female, in case you get lonely.”