Jason Frost - Warlord 04 - Prisonland (13 page)

“I don’t want to. You heard from somebody that heard from somebody else that Eric Ravensmith was called the Warlord for some reason none of you know about. But you figure ole Eric must be for sale then. Some hired gunslinger.” Eric stopped himself. He was getting angry and there was no sense in that. He still needed their help in getting off this rock and back to Asgard, back to Dodd. “Listen,” he said quietly, “I’m sure your cause is just, your problems real. It’s just that I can’t help you.”

Riva nodded at D.B. “Too busy, huh?”

Eric didn’t respond. He walked by D.B. and frowned at her, whispering, “Thanks for your help here, kid.”

She continued to stare dully at the floor.

Whatever glimmer of hope had been in Lynda Meyer’s eyes evaporated as she marched across the room toward the door. “You’ll be our guest for the next week or so, Mr. Ravensmith.”

“I can’t stay here that long.” Dodd would certainly be gone by then.

“You don’t have any choice,” she said and started through the door. She paused. “And if you try to steal a boat, you’ll be killed on sight.”

Eric stared at each of the women. Riva smirked, her hip thrust out as if posing for a magazine. Maggie looked indifferent, perched on the edge of the table. Lynda stood with powerful arms on her wide hips.

“I’m listening,” Eric sighed. “What’s your proposition?”

“You were a big help in there,” Eric said.

D.B. smiled. “I thought I played the shell-shocked orphan pretty damn good.”

“Well, You played it
well
.”

“Thanks. I thought I did too.”

Eric paced around the room. He tried the door for the tenth time. It was still locked.

“Where are we?” D.B. asked.

“Alcatraz.”

“I know it’s Alcatraz for Chrissake. I mean where on Alcatraz? This doesn’t look like any prison I’ve seen in the movies. Where are the bars? Where you’re supposed to bang your tin cup when you yell for the screws?”

“This is probably the warden’s house.”

“Like where Robert Redford lived in
Brubaker
?”

“What did you do besides watch movies?”

“What else was there to do in Fresno? You had a date, you went to the movies or a party. Usually both. Then I had my cheerleading. Don’t laugh.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Yeah, well don’t. Cheerleading was good training for the stage. Helped make my voice strong for my singing.”

Eric sat on the floor of the barren room. “Come here.”

D.B, stood in front of him. “What?”

He patted the ground next to him. “Here.”

“They said they’ll be right back.”

“So?”

She shrugged. “Okay, if that’s what turns you on.” Instantly she pulled her T-shirt off and started to tug off her shorts. “But it’ll have to be a quickie.”

“Jesus,” Eric said, grabbing her wrists before she could pull her shorts off any further. “I’ve never seen anyone so anxious to take off their clothes.”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“No, damn it. I wanted you to sit down. So we could talk.”

“Talk?” She laughed her crackling cricket laugh and hiked her shorts back up to her waist. She pulled the T-shirt back on and sat down. “Sorry,” she smiled. Then a look of concern spread across her freckled face. She nodded at his crotch. “You aren’t, uh, damaged are you? Like it doesn’t work or something?”

Eric smiled. “No. I’m fine.”

“You gay? I mean, it’s all right if you are. I don’t care or anything. You want me to sing Judy Garland songs, I will.”

“No, I’m not gay.”

She nodded slowly, thinking. “Don’t you ever get horny?”

Eric laughed. “Never.”

“Really?” She was amazed. “How do you do it?”

“Self-hypnosis.”

“Wow. Like with a swinging watch?”

“Something like that. Only I just imagine that Ward Cleaver is always looking over my shoulder. And I try not to do anything he’d disapprove of.”

“Ward Cleaver? Wasn’t he a president or something?”

“Should have been. He was the Beaver’s dad in
Leave it to Beaver
.”

“Oh yeah, I’ve seen that. Yeah, I see what you mean now. And it works, huh? Keeps you from getting excited?”

Eric nodded.

She laughed loudly, slapping his arm playfully. “What kind of jerk do you take me for? I know when you’re kidding me.”

Eric’s tone was serious. “Then maybe you can tell me when you’re kidding me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why wouldn’t you speak before, when those women were here.”

“I had nothing to say.”

“Come off it, D.B. They might have killed me.”

“I would’ve talked if I’d had to.”

Eric tilted her chin up so their eyes met. “Why the dumb act?”

“Protection. As long as people don’t think you’re a threat they leave you pretty much alone. If you don’t speak then they think you don’t hear and don’t think. They treat you like a doll or a pet, something not real. But at least they don’t kill you.”

“But these are women, they’re not like those men you were with.”

D.B. laughed harshly. “So they’re women. You think that makes them any less ruthless?” She dug the choke collar out of her waistband and slipped it over her head again. “You think the guys who put this here were the only ones to abuse me. Once they captured another girl, about twenty. They forced us to do stuff together while they watched. Later that night she tried to strangle me so she could steal my goddamn shoes.”

“What happened?”

“The others heard the noise and woke up. They watched, cheering us on, betting on who’d win. Like it was a goddamn football game or something. They didn’t try to stop us. Finally I bashed her head in with a rock. I don’t think she was dead, but they left her there anyway when we moved on the next day.” Her voice became thick and quivering. “You know what was weird about the whole thing?”

“What?” Eric said.

She tapped her New Balance running shoes. “These. They were a size too small for her. They wouldn’t have fit her anyway. Thing is, she knew it; she’d asked me about the size earlier. Yet she was willing to kill me for them anyway.” She sighed. “What do you make of that, Rock ’n’ Roll Man?”

The lock to the door clicked and the door swung open. Maggie Shreeve walked in alone, a holster slung across her chest
bandito-style
. An old single-action Colt .45 was jammed into the holster. She looked at the two of them on the floor and gave a disapproving frown, as if she’d caught them in the middle of something. “Ready?”

Eric turned to D.B. “Ready?”

She stared dully at the ground, not speaking.

“Tferrific,” he said, rising. Then to Maggie, “Let’s have the grand tour. And maybe you can let me know just what it is you want me to do?”

“That’s the lighthouse,” Maggie pointed out. “Doesn’t work anymore. We scavenged the parts for other things.”

“What about water?”

She pointed to the huge water tower. “That holds enough to take care of us. There’s only a couple hundred of us. What the rain doesn’t replenish we bring over from the mainland.”

“What about Thor and his men?”

“We don’t go there. We go down the western coast. It’s a little tricky because that’s close to the Halo, but it’s worked so far. We have enough water to grow most of the food we need. We even have some cattle and chickens we keep over in the cell blocks.”

“A chicken in every cell, huh?”

She didn’t crack a smile. Instead she continued along, pointing at the buildings, identifying them. Eric nodded, taking it all in, waiting for the proposition. D.B. strolled silently beside him, maintaining her dazed expression and dumb act.

“The women with children live over in the guards’ barracks. The rest of the women are divided between the guards’ barracks and the warden’s house. Depends on how they feel about kids. Over there is the power house. That’s where the single men stay.”

“How many men?” Eric asked.

“A dozen,” she shrugged, as if the number were insignificant. “Some pretty old, some pretty useless. A couple of them know their way around.”

“How come they weren’t on the raiding party that went after the doctor?”

Maggie spun and glared at him. “Why? You saying if men had gone they wouldn’t have made the same mistake?”

“No. I’m asking why they didn’t go when it would have been easier for them to slip through Asgard without as much risk.”

She stared into his eyes, searching for something. Her own dark eyes glittered with moisture. “We didn’t ask them.”

“Why not?”

Maggie shaded her eyes from the bright orange haze to the west. It looked like the sun was sitting on the ocean there, curtained behind the Halo. Her smooth brown skin took on an orangish hue from the sun reflecting off the water. “Be dark soon. We’d better hurry.”

“What happens when it gets dark?”

“Nothing, so far. We have to triple the guards around the perimeter of the island. Anything moves after dark, we kill it.” She smiled at Eric.

“I’ll remember.”

They walked on. Eric watched Maggie take the lead, her long legs lost in the baggy man’s jeans she wore. The pants were so big around her slender waist that she had a rope looped through them and tied at the front like a duffle bag. The pants legs were rolled up to mid-shin. Her shirt was a tattered man’s Oxford with a hole over the heart that had obviously been made by a bullet. The powder burns and blood had not come completely out despite the obvious scrubbing. Her white bra showed through the bullet hole. He watched her trim body march stiffly ahead until he felt D.B.’s elbow digging into his rib.

“Move it,” D.B. whispered gruffly.

“It speaks,” Eric grinned.

“What?” Maggie said, turning around.

Eric stopped walking. “You’ve been trooping me around this place for over an hour. I now know where everyone lives. I’ve seen your wonderful vegetable gardens. I’ve seen your infirmary. I’ve shaken hands with some of your elderly. I’ve seen the kids playing hopscotch in the prison yard. I’m impressed. You’ve done a hell of a job. No cases of plague.”

“Yet. But we can’t count on that, not with the trips to the mainland to get water. We’re bound to pick it up sooner or later. One flea bite is all it takes and it could wipe out the whole settlement. Everything we’ve built.”

“So what do you want from me? To kidnap the real doctor?”

“Partly.” Darkness was closing quickly, washing away the orange tint from the sky. Dozens of armed guards were walking to take their posts along the shoreline.

“What’s the other part?”

She pointed across the bay at Asgard. The bright fires that came from there were almost festive compared to the prickly little campfires that dotted the rest of the city. It was alluring, like the Strip in Las Vegas, a place of light and celebration. “That’s why we’re out here in the first place.”

“Asgard?”

Maggie nodded. “That’s where most of us used to live. It was a pretty good settlement, even better than here. We’d gathered most of the necessities. Had a good supply of food and water. Even had a school going. We were rebuilding. It wouldn’t be like the old San Francisco, but that was all right. Maybe even good.”

Eric leaned up against the stone wall around the prison yard and listened. D.B. had even looked up.