Jason Frost - Warlord 04 - Prisonland (10 page)

“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 coughed, 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.”

“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.”

Eric gave D.B.’s chain a jerk. “Hell, she keeps pretty good watch too. And she’s no dog.”

“Yeah, but if you get hungry you can cook the dog and eat it.”

Eric shrugged. “I can do the same with her.”

The fat man made a face at Eric. The shark on his head wrinkled in the furrows of his brow. “Jesus, man.”

“You know a guy named Dodd?” Eric asked, describing him.

“Sounds like a lot of guys around here. What about my dog?”

“You two make a nice couple.” Eric walked on, leading D.B. beside him. He’d had several offers for D.B. since strolling through Asgard, some of them fairly generous. But still no word on Dodd’s whereabouts.

They saw only a few women among the hundreds of men, and even those were sickly or maimed. Occasionally, they’d see a child, but only boys, and even then they were at least fifteen. There were no old people at all, no one over sixty.

“Where are all the women?” D.B. whispered as they strolled through Ghiradelli Square.

“I don’t know. Same place as the kids and old folks, I guess.”

“Spooky, huh?”

Eric didn’t answer. He scanned the crowds for Dodd.

Men milled about the lower level of the square, drifting from one location to another, but not with much purpose. There were booths set up, people selling objects or services. Tattoo artists. Used jeans. One booth with nothing but cans of Campbell’s soups. Eric overheard someone say the tough-looking guy in the booth had found a truckload of the soup but that two families had built shacks around the trailer and had been living off the soups for months. He had killed both families and brought the soup here to sell.

The whole place resembled those giant swap meets Eric had been to at fairgrounds and drive-ins. He’d seen several camps like this in his travels. New California’s version of a shopping mall.

“Just what was that stuff you gave those goons to get us in here?” D.B. asked.

“You watched me gather it.”

“Not exactly. You made me scrub off in the river while you did the gathering. Remember? You figured I’d be worth more if I were presentable.”

“I was right. Almost got me a Doberman.”

“C’mon, what was that stuff?”

“Jimsonweed.”

“Sounds familiar. What is it?”

“It’s from the potato family.”

She laughed. “You got those guys high smoking potatoes?”

Eric gave her chain a light jerk. “No laughing. People are watching. We’re on our way to get inoculated.”

“Tell me about it,” she shivered. “After seeing all those sick people and dead bodies, I can’t wait. I feel kinda crummy though, knowing we can get the shots but all those people outside can’t. Makes me feel guilty.”

“Good. As long as you still can feel guilt, you won’t become like these people.” Not like me, he thought, realizing for this first time that he hadn’t really given any thought to those poor wretches they’d passed on their way here. He’d thought only of finding Dodd. He wanted the tetracycline for himself because that would keep him alive long enough to find Tim. He hoped Tim had been inoculated, but knowing Fallows, all his followers would be taken care of, no matter who they had to slaughter to get it.

The infirmary and inoculation center was set up in one of the large warehouses near the bay, the kind that used to sell art. On the sidewalk outside, a big beefy man stood guard with a shotgun while a skinny teenager played three-card Monte with passersby. He shuffled the three cards—two aces and one queen—scattering them on the ground and letting people bet on choosing the queen. He had just won a bicycle tire and three aluminum arrows.

D.B. was chuckling beside Eric. “Potatoes, man. I can’t get over it. The way they were grinning and stuff, I thought they really were high.”

“They were.”

“Come off it. On potatoes?”

“Potato family. Jimsonweed is a tropical plant whose juices are poisonous, particularly when the plant is wilted.”

“What about those pretty violet flowers?”

“They come in violet or white and they produce a large, spiny fruit called a thornapple.”

“Oh yeah. We used to throw them at each other when I was a kid.” D.B. thought for a moment. “But if they’re poisonous, how do people smoke them to get high?”

“It’s dangerous. Takes skill. A lot of small California Indian tribes smoked jimsonweed as a religious ceremony. The Chungichnich cults contacted their highest god by puffing the stuff.”

“Highest god indeed,” she chuckled.

The line moved slowly. Eric was impatient, anxious to take the antibiotics and get on with his search for Dodd. Asgard was a strange mixture of people, an open feeling of hostility swirling in the air as men clutched their weapons and belongings with animal lust. Unlike Los Angeles, this section of San Francisco had not been buried under tons of ocean water. The shoreline had remained constant, the damage to the buildings done solely from the shaking of the earthquake. Eric looked across the bay and saw Alcatraz Island, the dim outline of the prison. Last time Eric had been here was three years ago with Annie. They’d left the kids back home with his mother and come up here for a weekend of, as Annie put it, “indulgence.” They’d eaten dim sum at Yank Sing’s, gone to the aquarium at the park, had sex until they both walked gingerly. And laughed. Most of all he remembered the laughter.

“Uh oh,” D.B. said. “Here they come.” She hooked her thumb over her shoulder.

Eric glanced back and saw Grub leading two other armed men up the line, searching every face.

“What’ll we do?” D.B. asked, putting her sunglasses on.

“Nothing.” Eric grabbed her leash tight.

“There,” Grub said, pointing at Eric and D.B. He and the other two men marched up to Eric. The two men flanked Eric and D.B., each gripping a pistol but not actually pointing it. Grub faced Eric. “Thor wants to see you.”

“I appreciate the invitation,” Eric said.

“It’s not an invitation,” one of the other men snarled. He had an earring made of a bone. A human thumb bone, Eric noticed. “He wants to see you so move your ass.”

Eric smiled. “It’s okay with me. But the girl and I have just come in from traveling through the outside. If he doesn’t mind having us wandering about in here before we’ve had our shots from your doctor, fine. It’s his city.”

Grub looked at the other two. “He’s right. I’ll stick with him and bring him over afterwards. You go ahead and tell Thor.”

They nodded and pushed their way through the line and disappeared.

“Thor’s personal guard,” Grub explained. “They was on death row with Thor back in Q.”

“What’s Thor want with me?”

Grub grinned. “As if you didn’t know, sport.”

“The dope.”

“Good shit, man. Me and Hanks took some over to Thor and he sampled it too. Gonna give you a quiz, pal, and you better pass.”

“And if I don’t?”

Grub laughed at the notion. “Then you gonna find out why they call him Thor.” Grub eyed D.B., then stroked her shoulder with his dirty fingers. “Nice piece, man. How much?”

“Haven’t decided yet.”

“Keep me in mind, huh?” He reached out and squeezed one of D.B.’s breasts. She didn’t budge.

Eric slapped his hand away.

Grub’s eyes blazed as he spun toward Eric, thumbing back the hammer of his gun.

“No free samples,” Eric grinned good-naturedly.

Grub relaxed a bit, but his face was still grim as he stared at Eric. Finally, he shrugged it off and waved for Eric and D.B. to follow him. “C’mon, we don’t have to stand in any fucking line.”

He led them past the line of people, around some curtained partitions, through a couple doors. One room was a kind of examination room. Five women sat around naked while a man went from one to another, spreading their legs, shining a flashlight, examining them. The women were all either fat, bony, ugly, or maimed. They didn’t even look up when the three of them paraded through.

“Gynecologist?” Eric asked Grub.

Grub snorted. “Him? Used to be a pimp. Doc Fishbine trained him to check twats because Thor didn’t want them spreading gonorrhea or syphilis. Shit, almost everybody’s got herpes around here anyway. Last thing we need is to wipe out our army with some cunt rot.”