Jason Frost - Warlord 04 - Prisonland (21 page)

“The plants I gave Grub and Hanks.”

“Yup. I don’t go in for that shit myself, but the guys who tried it said it was the best stuff they’d had since the marijuana ran out. What is it?”

Eric shook his head. “I want a trade.”

Thor’s smile was intact as he hefted his heavy hammer above his head. “See this? Know why I carry it?”

“Never know when you might have to pound a stubborn nail?”

“Or a stubborn man.” His smile faded. “I did a lot of reading in Q. Some guys studied law, worked on their appeals. Other guys studied creative writing, wrote books about their tough lives and the harsh conditions of prison, how they were misunderstood and mistreated. I read mythology. Greeks and Romans and especially the Norse myths. You know about Thor?”

“Thor, the thunderer,” Eric said. “Eldest son to Odin, chief god in Asgard. Thor was the noblest and most beloved of the gods. He had three special gifts: his hammer, which had split the skull of many Frost and Mountain giants, and which, when he threw it at an enemy, always returned to him; his belt of strength, which when fastened around his waist doubled his power; and his iron gloves, which made him use his hammer more accurately. Thor’s name is where we get our word Thursday.”

Thor nodded respectfully, though looking a little annoyed. “You and I are probably the only ones in this damn town who even know that much. I don’t have the magic belt or iron gloves, but I got a fucking hammer. And I know how to use it.”

“I still want to trade.”

Thor laughed, lowering his hammer. “Make your pitch.”

“I tell you the plant, where you can find it, how to make it grow.”

“For what?”

“Dodd.”

“What’s a Dodd?”

“A man I’ve been tracking.”

“A man?” His smile was lewd. “You didn’t strike me as the type.”

“Strange times,” Eric said, not caring what Thor thought.

“Wait a minute. Dodd. Isn’t that the guy in the infirmary? The one you were knocking around when those broads kidnapped you?”

“Yes. They thought I was your Doctor Fishbine.”

Thor chuckled. “Just like women, huh? Come in for a doctor, go home with a warlord. I love it.” Thor turned to Hanks. “That Dodd guy still around?”

“Yeah,” Hanks said. “You had me lock him up until you figured out if he’d had something to do with those chicks sneaking in here.”

“Oh, yeah. Go get him.”

Hanks started up the aisle.

“Not you, Hanks,” Thor said. “Rydell.”

One of the cardplayers leaning against the screen looked up, tossed his cards down, and started up the sloping aisle toward the exit. Hanks just stood in the aisle looking confused.

Thor stood up, his hammer hanging by the leather strap around his wrist, dangling loosely against his leg. Slowly he started up the aisle. Eric stood up and followed. “The problem with my job, Ravensmith, is my followers expect me to be perfect. Expect me to be a god. Of course, where else is there left on this planet but right here in this savage environment where a man can become a god?”

“This is the place for it, all right,” Eric said.

“The point is, it’s tough being a god.” Thor was next to Hanks now and he paused, looking back at Eric. Then Thor’s arm suddenly snapped high into the air, his fist gripping the worn wooden handle of his hammer as it whistled through the air in a blurred arc of black metal and came thundering down on top of Hanks’s head. Blood-soaked clumps of hair and bone and brain splattered about like the spray in a swimming pool when a diver belly-flops. Red goo freckled Eric’s body. The warm flecks of living tissue stuck to his face and shirt like leeches. Eric backed away as he saw Thor’s hammer fly up into the air again.

Hanks had sagged to his knees with the stunned look of a bludgeoned pig. Blood slurped from the crack atop his head, mapping his face in crazy zigzags. The mallet crashed down on Hank’s weakened skull again. This time it sank through the collapsed bone and into the brain like a meteor hitting quicksand. More blood sprayed up onto Thor’s immaculately ironed shirt and maroon tie, soaking through, plastering the shirt to his skin.

Hanks was dead, but he remained balanced on his knees because Thor’s hammer had sunk so deep into the skull he couldn’t dislodge it.

“Come on,” he coaxed, jerking on the handle with one hand, holding Hanks’s bobbing body down with the other. Finally the hammer snapped free with a muddy squishing sound. “Asshole,” Thor said angrily at Hanks, as if it had been his fault the hammer had gotten stuck. Thor took one last vindictive swipe at Hanks’s face, caving in the cheek and shifting the nose across the face with the same solid blow. “Clean this mess up,” he said to no one in particular, but all of the men rushed to do as he said.

Eric followed Thor up the aisle and out into the morning sunlight. A couple more of Thor’s guards were standing around outside. They straightened as he emerged.

“This god business,” Thor said to Eric, shaking his head. “Tough job.”

“Messy, too,” Eric said, deadpan.

Thor turned and smiled at Eric. “You’re about to find out just how messy, Warlord. You see, I’m going to give you Dodd all right. Bu you’re going to meet him in combat. In a little bit of entertainment we call the Womb Tomb.”

“Entertainment?”

“To those watching. Not so much for those inside.”

“Me and Dodd.”

He nodded. “You and Dodd.” He turned to one of the guards. “Spread the word. We’re putting on a show.” To the other guard he said, “Get the Tomb ready.”

Both guards grinned excitedly and ran off on eager legs.

“Show biz,” Thor shrugged.

Within half an hour, hundreds of people had gathered, elbowing for a better view, leaning out of balconies where famous stores and restaurants used to be. They began to chant in unison, “Womb Tomb! Womb Tomb!”

“He’s here,” the guard said. “Dodd.”

“Very good,” Thor said, speaking a little louder over the din of the shouting crowd. They had worked their way up to a chanting frenzy, demanding that the Womb Tomb begin.

“Having fun so far?” Thor asked Eric with a laugh. The splotches of Hanks’s blood and flesh had hardened onto Thor’s shirt in a sickening pattern. It looked as if Thor had been blasted by a shotgun. He glanced down at the mess and frowned. “Uh oh. Petey is gonna be pissed at this. I don’t know how many times he’s told me to soak blood stains right away or they won’t come out.”

“Good launderer is hard to find,” Eric said.

Thor lifted his hammer and playfully nudged Eric’s chest with the blood-crusted mallet. “I like your sense of humor. I hope you still have it after you’ve strolled through the Womb Tomb.”

Looking up the brick steps and between buildings, Eric could see the fringes of the crowd as they huddled even closer together, their chanting getting louder and louder. Suddenly there was a growling of motors starting, like dirt bikes or lawn mowers.

“Ready?” Thor asked.

“Where’s Dodd?”

“Up those steps and through that crowd. Waiting.”

“You going to give me a hint what’s going on here?”

“You mean the Womb Tomb?” Thor snickered. “Silly name, I know, but you have to remember the mentality of the people we’re dealing with here. These guys are nickel-and-dime crooks, slaughter your family for the change in your sofa cushion. They’re a little low on female companionship, so their blood is pretty hot for some action.”

“Violent action?”

“Usually works out that way.”

“So I might be killed?”

Thor shrugged. “You need a more positive attitude. Sure, one of you will be killed. Or both. Last three times, both men died. But one for sure.”

“Sheridan survived,” one of the guards reminded Thor.

“Yeah, but minus an arm and a leg. Doc did what he could, but ...” Thor sighed.

“Aren’t you forgetting our deal?” Eric said. “If I die, the information about the plant dies with me.”

Thor smiled. “So? We’ll find it eventually. There is one thing more important to my men than getting high: fucking. And I don’t mean each other and the animals and dogmeat females we got around here. I’m talking prime ribs, Ravensmith.” He pointed his heavy hammer out at Alcatraz, the sun filtering through the Halo giving it an orange shimmering tint. “Tomorrow we go on the greatest panty raid in history. Only we don’t stop at the panties. Now, you’re a soldier. What’s the usual procedure the night before a big battle?”

Eric took a deep breath. He understood now. “Put the troops minds at ease. Diversion.”

“Yeah, a show! Well, we couldn’t get Bob Hope, but we got you and Dodd. The two of you look like you’ve done some fighting in your time. This should be the best combat yet.”

“And if I win?”

“Why ask now? I’d only lie to you.”

The guards laughed.

Thor marched up the brick steps, his tan Topsiders fashionably scuffed. A few dried fragments of Hanks’s brain rode the top of the shoe.

Two guards bottled Eric between them and followed Thor.

When the crowd saw Thor using his hammer, to clear a path through the bodies, they shouted even louder. “Thor! Thor! Thor!” It boomed like thunder around the brick buildings of the courtyard.

Eric estimated that the entire population of Asgard had squeezed into this courtyard. Their cheers and yelling nearly drowned out the sound of the racing motors.

“It costs us precious gasoline every time we do this,” Thor hollered over the crowd’s shouting. “But it’s worth it.”

As the crowd parted to make way for them, Eric caught a glimpse of what they had all been shouting about. At first he thought it was a cage of some sort, but as they got closer and more people scattered from their path, he could see all of it. Yes, a cage of some sort. But much more.

“The Womb Tomb,” Thor said, introducing it as if it were a friend he wanted Eric to meet.

Eric looked it over. The Tomb was a long square tunnel of barbed wire about five feet wide and six feet high. It stretched through the courtyard between what once was a bookstore and a sculpture gallery. One end of the barbed wire tunnel was corked with a wooden wall, braced with timber so that it couldn’t be budged. The wall also had half a dozen slots in it. Eric didn’t know what they were for until he saw the men emerging from the gutted bookstore carrying what had been making that loud motorized growl. Chainsaws!

The men carried them to the wooden wall and poked the saws through the slots, lashing the motors to little shelves behind the wall, a wire looped over the trigger to keep the cutters turning. Five buzzing chainsaws jutted through the wall at staggered levels. A middle-aged man with grease on his hands shuffled up to Thor, wiping his hands with an oily rag. “Can’t get that last saw going, Thor. Carburetor is shot to hell.” He grinned. “Too much shit got inside. Bits of bone and guts.” Thor waved him away. “Five will do nicely.” Across the courtyard, Dodd stood between two guards. He was stripped to the waist, his huge tanned muscles glimmering in the orange sunlight. Eric watched him through the barbed wire tunnel as he hefted the baseball bat, took a few practice swings. The crowd near him roared with approval.

Thor signaled to someone in the crowd and a teenaged kid peeled away from the rowdy masses, picked up a second bat lying at Dodd’s feet, and ran it over to Thor. Eric recognized the child right away. Lynda Meyer’s son.