Jason Frost - Warlord 04 - Prisonland

by Jason Frost - Warlord 04

  Lynda Meyer’s eyes were moist, but her voice was firm. “Then I’d expect you to bring back the doctor.”

  Eric believed her. “I’ll think about it,” he said, guiding her to the door.

  She shook his hand and left.

  “Wow,” D.B. said, her own eyes a bit moist. “I thought I was tough, but that’s some lady, huh?”

  “Yes,” Eric said. He began packing his backpack, fastening straps.

  “All right,” D.B. said excitedly. “This mean you’re done thinking, Doc Rock?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’re going to help them, right? Go back to Asgard, bring back her son and the doctor, then get this place set up for a fight? Right?”

  Eric tested the straps. When he was satisfied, he leaned the pack next to the door. “Wrong. I’m not kidnapping anybody, and I’m not getting mixed up in their fight, no matter how noble the cause. As soon as it gets dark, I’m stealing a boat and going back to Asgard to hunt down Dodd, if he’s still there, and find out where my son is.”

  “I don’t believe you,” D.B. said, hurt and disappointment in her voice.

  “Believe me. In a few hours I’ll be gone.”

  Tears spilled from her eyes. “You go ahead and run. Not me. I’m staying and helping. Maybe I’m no goddamn warlord, but then it doesn’t look like you’re much of one either.” She swiped at her eyes with her T-shirt. “I’m staying.” She tucked her slingshot in her waistband and stormed out the door.

  Eric stood in the doorway watching her run. He glanced up to the sky and calculated when it would be dark enough to steal the boat.

  * * *

  THIRTEEN

  “Over there,” she said, shouldering her shotgun.

  Her companion gripped her .22 at arm’s length as if she were afraid it might leap out of her hand and turn on her.

  “For God’s sake, Ellen,” the woman with the shotgun said, “don’t be such a baby. Check it out.”

  “I don’t see anything,” Ellen said.

  “It’s too dark to see anything. You gotta go down into the brush. That’s where I heard the noise.”

  “Okay,” Ellen said.

  Five feet away from the two armed guards, Eric hid in a clump of brush waiting for them to pass. It was dark enough so that he couldn’t see them clearly, just the outline of their bodies and guns. He breathed shallowly and scrunched himself lower behind the brush.

  Ellen climbed carefully down the embankment, losing her footing and sliding down the last few feet. She waved her arms wildly to regain balance and Eric feared she might accidentally squeeze the trigger during all that flailing.

  “Get on with it,” the woman with the shotgun said with annoyance. “We’ve got a lot more ground to cover.”

  “Fuck you.” There was as much fear as anger in Ellen’s voice. “You’re the one who heard the noise, why don’t you come down and poke around in the dark bushes. Huh?”

  “You’re already there. Besides, I’m keeping you covered.”

  “Big deal.” Ellen used the gun like a stick, poking it into bushes, bending branches back to see what was behind them. But her heart obviously wasn’t in it and she gave up long before she reached the brush where Eric hid. She tucked her .22 in her waistband and started back up the hill, using all fours to climb up the steep slope. “Every ten minutes you hear some goddamn noise and every ten minutes I gotta scale some goddamn cliff or stick my nose in some dark corner that even if there really was something there, and there hasn’t been once in the three fucking months we been doing guard duty, I’d be the one getting their head blown off.”

  “I’m the one who knows how to use the shotgun, remember?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard all about you and your daddy going skeet shooting. I run across any fucking skeets in the bushes, I’ll give you a call.”

  Eric remained motionless, listening to their voices retreat into the night.

  “I was covering you the whole way. I’m back-up.”

  “You’re fat, that’s what you are. And that’s why you keep sending me up and down every rock on this island. Why can’t you ever hear a noise on a flat surface, for Chrissake?”

  “Don’t be such a cry baby, Ellen.”

  Eric was about to sneak out from behind the bushes when the woman stopped talking. Uncertain how close or far away they were, he stopped in mid-crouch. Were they back-tracking, about to spring on him from above, shotgun and .22 blazing? He waited.

  “Hey,” he heard Ellen say, her voice friendly as if no cross words had been spoke, “What do you think about Maggie and that guy who beat up Nestor?”

  “Raven-something? “

  “Ravensmith. A hunk by any other name.”

  And they continued walking away.

  Eric emerged from the bushes, hoisted his backpack in place, and slid along the concrete wall. Even in the darkness he could make out the big black lettering: WARNING. KEEP OFF. U.S. GOVT. PROPERTY. Only the G and O in GOVT. had been spray-painted red and INDIAN had been painted in its place. Eric grinned. A faint reminder of the Indian occupation of the island between 1969 and 1971 when Dennis Banks led representatives of twenty tribes on a siege. They pitched traditional tepees, scrawled Nixon and Mayor Alioto’s names above cells, trashed some of the buildings and landmarks. But they also called national attention to the plight of their tribes. In a rare display of restraint, government officials did not use force. Eventually, the Indians left. The next year Alcatraz became part of the National Park System that conducted guided tours of the prison.

  Eric remembered the day he and Big Bill Tenderwolf had driven Bill’s new Mercedes all the way from New Mexico to San Franciso. Upon arrival, Big Bill had sold the Mercedes, which he’d only had for three months, bought a used VW bug, and spent the rest of the money on supplies to be shipped out to the Indians on Alcatraz. He didn’t know any of them personally, and the Mercedes had been his prized possession, earned after a lot of years scraping to put himself through graduate school for his MBA. But he didn’t seem sad at all when he sold it. He’d grinned at Eric and, said, “I’ve driven the white man’s car, and you know what?” His smile broadened into a laugh. “He drives a hell of a good car.” They’d driven the VW back to New Mexico and it had only broken down twice on the road. It took Big Bill three years to buy another Mercedes.

  Eric worked his way slowly across the island, dodging teams of guards crisscrossing Alcatraz, hiding from the anxious rifles and bows of the guards in the watch-tower and pacing around the balcony of the lighthouse. It was slow work.

  He’d spent that afternoon alone. D.B. never came back after she’d stormed out on him, angry at his refusal to help these people. He didn’t blame her; he wasn’t feeling too proud of himself either. But he kept picturing Dodd slipping out of Asgard, getting away before Eric could force the truth about where Tim was. That helped. Some.

  Maggie had come by a few hours ago, rapping lightly on the door, calling his name. Eric had listened to her smooth voice, felt a warmth deep inside, in a place they didn’t have a name for in anatomy charts. But he hadn’t answered her. Had let her knock and call, knowing she knew he was inside. Better that way, he’d reasoned. Seeing her again might weaken his resolve, delay his departure, give Dodd more chance to get away.

  So he’d stayed in his room all afternoon, using his confiscated Swiss Army knife to dig up a few nails from the walls and floor. Then he’d cut small sections of shoestring, fluffing the edges out into little puffs. Using thread pulled from his socks, he fashioned his weapon.

  Now he pressed himself flat against the ground and waited for a man and woman guard to pass. When they were far enough away, he bellied across the dirt trail and slid on his stomach down the embankment toward the docks where a dozen boats of all sizes were moored.

  “Stop!” he heard the familiar voice singing in a whisper. “In the name of love.” D.B. giggled.

  “Jesus,” Eric gasped as she popped up out of the thick grass. “You’ve got to
stop doing that!”

  “C’mon, Doc Rock. Lighten up.”

  Eric took a deep breath, his heart banging against ribs. “What are you doing here?”

  “I wanna go with you.”

  “I thought you were staying. Helping these people fight.”

  She shrugged. “Changed my mind. No big deal.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Knock it off, D.B. Why’d you change your mind?”

  “Logic. Like you said, these folks don’t stand a chance, so why should I bust my hump to help only to end up just like ’em? I was just upset before, acting like some dumb kid. You were right, Rock Man, get out while the getting’s good. Save yourself.”

  Listening to her cynical words, Eric felt that twinge of guilt coming back. He needed to explain. “I’m not saving myself, I’m going after my son.”

  “Sure, Doc. And I’m going after my mom. And that Meyer gal will probably go after her kid. Seems everybody is looking for somebody. When you think about it, that’s not too much different than the way we were before the fucking quakes.”

  Eric gazed hard into her eyes. She was too young to be so damn cold. But then ideals were a luxury these days.

  “Well?” she asked.

  Eric sneaked across another dirt trail and stood facing the hurricane fence topped with three rows of rusted barbed wire. He tossed his backpack over the fence and quickly scampered up the chain link, easing himself gingerly over the barbed wire. He dropped soundlessly to the other side.

  They both crouched there, D.B. pressing her face up against the fence. “Take me, Eric. Please. I’ll sing for, anything you like. Requests. Hell, nothing but Beatles and the Four Seasons.” There were tears in her eyes as she forced a smile. “Musicals, Doc. How about, ‘Don’t Cry for Me, Alcatraz’?” She tried to laugh, but it came out dry and weary.

  He looked at her for a long time. She stared back, not saying anything.

  “Come on,” he finally said, helping her over the fence.

  He lifted her to the ground, his hands braced around her narrow ribs, her hands gripping his shoulders for support. Her heart pounded a frantic rhythm through his fingertips. “Okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  They crept down the dock, moving slowly. Eric made no sound as he moved, but D.B.’s feet creaked faintly against the bobbing wood dock. Boats lined each side of the dock, crowded next to each other hull to hull. There were all kinds: a Wellcraft 34’ yacht, a Black Fin 29 for sportfishing, a Trojan International 9, right down to a couple small one-person Sunfish sailboats, canoes, kayaks, row boats.

  The cold fog drifted lazily off the water, swirling around the dock and ships so that the water wasn’t even visible.

  “Aren’t you cold?” Eric whispered.

  “Nope.”

  He started to dig through his backpack. “I’ve got a sweater ...”

  “No,” she said, stopping him. “Let’s just go.”

  Eric nodded, readjusted the backpack, and pointed out the boat they were going to take.

  “Christ,” she complained. “That’s nothing more than a row boat. Why can’t we take one of those big ones with a motor?”

  “Because they make too much noise when we start them up. Besides I don’t know how much gas they have and we don’t have the time to go around checking each of them.”

  A harsh laugh cut through the fog. “You don’t have time to do anything,” the deep raspy voice said. “Except maybe to kiss your asses goodbye.”

  Eric held his arms away from his body and turned slowly. Standing on the bow of the Wellcraft 34, one foot lifted onto the railing, stood Nestor Tulane, casually pointing a Weatherby 12-gauge shotgun at Eric’s face, a triumphant smile twisting his lips.

  “You’ll pardon my voice,” he said, the sound somewhere between a rasp and a growl. “Had a little accident this morning in the mess hall. Ran into somebody’s elbow.” He hopped off the boat onto the dock and walked toward Eric and D.B., his shotgun trained on Eric’s stomach.

  Eric glanced back over his shoulder.

  “No one’s coming, Ravensmith,” Nestor said. “I requested guard duty over here. Just me.”

  D.B. was slowly, slowly reaching around the small of her back for her slingshot.

  Nestor looked over at her with a grin. “Keep reaching, kid, and I blow the big deal Warlord here into tiny little warlords. Mushlords.” He cackled, his eyes back on Eric. “I knew you’d make a break. I knew it, man. You know how I knew?”

  “Tell me,” Eric said.

  Nestor stepped closer, the shotgun only inches from Eric’s stomach. “ ’Cause that’s what I’d have done if I were you. And you and me are just the same. We understand how things work and how to use that knowledge to get what we want.”

  “The difference is in what we want.”

  “Is it?” Nestor’s grin spread. “We want what’s ours.”

  Eric looked at D.B. She was staring at him as if waiting for him to refute Nestor’s logic. But he couldn’t. Instead, he changed the subject. “Well, at least you got what you wanted. We’re leaving. Staying out of your politics here.”

  “Too late, pal. Much too late.”

  “It’s what you want,” D.B. said. “Why try to stop us now?”

  “Wanted, baby. Past tense. See, your sugar daddy here made me look bad in front of my constituents. Made me look like some asshole. Bad for the image. Now I’ve got to re-establish my, uh, credibility.”

  Eric nodded. “By killing us?”

  “ ’Fraid so.”

  “Just turn us in,” D.B. pleaded. “Turn us in for trying to steal a boat. That should be enough.”

  Nestor laughed. “Even if it were enough, it still wouldn’t be enough.”

  “Bastard,” D.B. said.

  While D.B. called Nestor names, Eric coughed, turned his head discreetly aside, and used his teeth to pluck one of the small darts he’d fashioned and pinned under his collar. He coughed again, used his tongue to retract the dart, turned his head to face Nestor. The dart lay cradled on his tongue.

  “Nasty cough, Ravensmith,” Nestor said, his grin turning nasty now, his eyes bitter as he raised the shotgun. “Fortunately ole Doc Nestor has the cure, right here.”

  Eric curled the edges of his tongue into a half-tube, and spit the dart into Nestor’s face. The nail end jabbed deep into his cheek, the flocked shoestring that balanced its flight looked like a fuzzy bee stuck to Nestor’s face. Nestor screamed savagely as Eric forearmed the shotgun aside a second before it exploded, blasting a hole in the dock instead of Eric’s stomach.

  “Go!” Eric ordered D.B. She hesitated, but then took off for the rowboat.

  Shouts of other guards wondering about the shotgun blast echoed across Alcatraz. The voices were getting closer.

  But Eric was too busy wrestling on the dock with Nestor to worry about the approaching guards. They both struggled over the shotgun, pushing and tugging, knees cracking into groins, elbows smashing jaws. Still both men held tight.

  “Come on, Eric,” D.B. hollered from inside the tiny row boat.

  “Take off,” he yelled back. “I’ll catch up.”

  “I can’t. Not without you.”

  “Go!”

  She did. She untied the line, jammed the oarlocks into place, sat on the rowing thwart, and started to row the boat out into the fog. A couple shots cracked and bullets splashed the water near the boat. An arrow zipped into the water three feet off the bow.

  Eric yelled, “Row, damn it. Row.”

  Nestor tried twisting the shotgun to loosen Eric’s grip, but Eric held fast. His backpack made movement awkward, but he managed to sweep his foot behind Nestor’s calf, dropping him to one knee. That gave the leverage advantage to Eric. But that advantage wasn’t going to be enough if he didn’t hurry. He heard several of the guards at the fence, climbing.

  Nestor’s face was contorted with rage, the tiny dart still stuck in his cheek, a thin zigzag of blood
etched down his face like an earthquake fault.

  Suddenly Eric released the shotgun. Nestor wavered slightly, but regained balance almost immediately. Almost. In the fraction of a second he wavered, Eric snapped the palm of his hand against the dart, driving the nail all the way into Nestor’s face. The physical damage was minimal, but the pain was great enough to distract Nestor. Time enough for Eric to grip the shotgun, not trying to pull it free from Nestor’s iron grip, but rather swivelling the butt end around until it clipped Nestor in the head, knocking him down. The second blow was to the temple, a quick jab with the wood stock in the right spot. He was dead before his body hit the dock.

  A bullet kicked up splinters in the dock as Eric ran toward the rowboat. A couple of arrows zipped past him as if trying to outrace him.

  D.B. had only rowed thirty yards from the dock and now she stopped to wait for Eric.

  “Keep rowing,” he waved at her as he ran. Bullets gulped into the water around her.

  “Hurry!” she said, waiting.

  Eric shook free of the backpack as he ran. It would be hard enough to outswim bullets as it was.

  “Go, Eric,” D.B. urged.

  He was only a couple feet from the edge of the dock when he heard the shot that brought a scream from her throat. She grabbed at her chest in the same instant she somersaulted backward out of the boat. The dim moonlight glinted off her choke collar as she sank beneath the dark water.

  “Noooo!” Eric dove off the dock into the icy water. The cold squeezed his body like a fist, but he kept swimming, arms digging into the water as if trying to empty the ocean. Vaguely he heard the shots behind him, heard the plop of bullets and arrows diving around him. He ignored them, concentrating on reaching the boat.

  When his hands finally bumped the weathered wood of the boat, he bobbed up and searched the water’s surface for D.B. He called her name.

  Nothing.

  Despite the heavy footsteps of the three women and two men guards pounding the wooden dock as they ran closer, Eric continued to dive, searching for D.B.

  Nothing.

  He clung to the side of the boat to catch his breath. An arrow dug into the wood hull a foot from his arm. No use. D.B. was gone. Eric swung his body up over the gunwale and sprawled into the boat, striking his head against the seat in the stern. A bullet bit a hole in the bow and water spouted in. Eric planted himself on the rowing thwart, gripped the oars, and leaned his back into the hard work of rowing. The fog was thick enough to offer some cover as he muscled the boat through the bay, his bad tooth aching from the shock of the cold water. Even as he rowed and the bullets and arrows stopped coming, he kept glancing back over his shoulder, searching the water for D.B., expecting to see her treading water, waving at him.