Jason Frost - Warlord 04 - Prisonland

by Jason Frost - Warlord 04

  “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.

  “Give it to him,” Thor told the boy, who handed the bat to Eric. There were several dents, dark blood stains soaked into the wood.

  “Thanks,” Eric said to the kid, looking deep into his eyes. “Your mother says hello.”

  The kid shifted his eyes away uncomfortably.

  “Well,” Thor said. “Nothing left but to get on with it. Rules are simple, Ravensmith. You both go into one end of the tunnel and no one comes out until the other is dead. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then go get him, slugger.” Thor chuckled, nudging Eric forward with his hammer.

  Dodd approached from the other side, his bat gripped tightly in both hands.

  “Now don’t start nothing till you get inside,” Thor warned, “or my boys will have to finish you both off. That’s it, go right inside, both of you. Keep walking toward the middle. Middle, Dodd. You know what middle means? That’s it. Okay, good. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention one other thing. Our incentive program.” He lifted his hammer high in the air. From somewhere behind the crowd, another engine started up. The crowd scrambled aside as a battered jeep drove through. It was an ordinary jeep, except for the wood plating mounted on the front. About five feet wide and four feet high, it was studded with protruding blades: knives, forks, ice picks, nails, anything that was sharp stuck out like a vertical bed of nails. The jeep drove up to the entrance of the Tomb and braked. The driver giggled and fidgeted in his seat, racing the motor, as if he couldn’t wait to start. “Easy now, Riley,” Thor said to him. “We wanna give our contestants a chance at the big prize.” The crowd laughed. Thor walked up next to the barbed wire and stared at Eric and Dodd. He had to shout over the sounds of the chainsaws and the jeep, but by now the crowd had hushed to listen to him. “You boys have only one thing to do, finish each other off. But be careful, don’t get too close to door number one,” he pointed at the wall with the saws, “or door number two,” he pointed at the revving jeep. “Then you lose. Did I mention that the jeep will be slowly driving through the tunnel while you’re fighting? Careless of me. But it will. That should encourage you not to dally. If you aren’t done by the time the jeep reaches the other wall, well, I guess then you’ll both lose, huh?”

  “What happens when one of us kills the other?” Eric asked.

  Thor shrugged. “Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it.” He straightened his tie, lifted his hammer, and hollered, “Begin!”

  The jeep immediately started slowly rolling toward them, its jagged blades threatening to prod them toward the awaiting chainsaws.

  Eric faced Dodd. Both men had to crouch slightly because the barbed wire over their heads formed a spiked ceiling a couple of inches lower than their heights. Dodd’s bat rested on his shoulder as he hunched low, ready to swing into Eric’s skull. Eric held his bat gripped at either end and straight out in front of him.

  Dodd’s eyes were desperate. He stalked Eric slowly, faking swings with his bat. Behind Dodd the chainsaws screamed. Behind Eric, the deadly jeep rumbled closer.

  “Well, Eric,” Dodd said, “it’s got to be one of us so it might as well be you.” He swung his bat with a grunt, but the confines of the barbed wire cage didn’t allow much swinging room. The top of the bat scraped along the wire before cracking into Eric’s upraised bat. Dodd pulled the bat back and swung again, this time missing the cage. But Eric managed to block the blow with his own bat again.

  Behind them, the jeep rolled closer.

  Eric jabbed at Dodd’s ribs, but Dodd knocked the bat aside with his own, countering with a kick to Eric’s jaw. The heavy boot connected, knocking Eric off his feet and the bat out of his hands. Dodd quickly straddled the stunned body and brought his bat straight down as if he were driving a stake through the heart of a vampire. Eric used his forearm to brush the bat aside, though he felt the sharp sting of cracking bone above his wrist. He ignored the pain, grabbing the blunt end of Dodd’s bat and abruptly shoving it straight back up into Dodd’s face. The handle clipped Dodd’s chin and sent him reeling backward into the barbed
wire. He screamed as the tiny barbs bit into his back.

  Eric hopped up, threatening Dodd with the bat. “Where’s Fallows?”

  Dodd unhooked himself from the wire and began backing up, toward the humming chainsaws.

  “Where’s Fallows?” Eric demanded.

  Dodd looked over his shoulder. The chainsaws poked through the wall less than ten feet behind him. Over Eric’s shoulder he could see the jeep and its cutlery closing in. About twelve feet away.

  Eric tried to close the space between them, but Dodd kept backing up toward the chainsaws.

  “You said San Diego before. True?”

  Dodd backed away another foot. Eric followed. The saws seemed to get louder at their approach, as if excited, as if their voracious appetites were about to be satisfied.

  Eric poked the bat into Dodd’s chest. Another foot closer to the saws. “Where?”

  Dodd’s silence resulted in another prod. Another foot closer.

  “San Diego?” Eric asked.

  The jeep rolled across the brick ground. Fifteen feet separated the jeep’s blades from the wall’s saws. In between, Eric and Dodd faced each other.

  Eric realized that Dodd wouldn’t talk. Dodd knew it was his edge, the one thing keeping Eric from killing him right then. But if Eric didn’t kill him, they’d both be dead in a matter of two minutes.

  Before he could decide, Dodd rushed straight at Eric. Eric clubbed at his head, but Dodd cut to the left, absorbing the blow on his shoulder. The collarbone cracked, but Dodd kept coming like a young football tackle trying to make the pros. He collided with Eric, knocking them both to the ground. Fists and elbows and knees battered each other as they rolled across the hard bricks, struggling for control of the bat. Eric felt a knee pressing against his chest, then launching him backward as Dodd flipped him away. Eric flew backward into the wire, his hand raked by the sharp barbs. Blood poured from the long gashes.

  They were both on their feet now, Dodd wielding the bat, Eric backing up. The chainsaws nipped away less than two feet from Eric’s back. Dodd was grinning, saying something to Eric, but the saws drowned his voice.

  Dodd swung the bat. Eric ducked and the bat continued through the air, clipping the edge of a chain-saw. In a flurry of splinters and dust, the saw chewed up the tip of the bat. Dodd swung again and Eric sidestepped him. But he miscalculated his dodging room and brushed the edge of a saw with his leg. His pants tore open and a square of thigh skin disappeared as if wiped clean by a magic eraser. In its place was a burning patch of bloody thigh.

  This brought a new series of shouts and chants from the crowd. All Eric could hear was their beastly roar beneath the loud whine of the saws.

  The jeep had inched another few feet closer.

  Eric calculated less than a minute left before the blades of the jeep forced them into the saws.

  But he was unarmed. Dodd, standing a little more confident now, his bulging muscles polished smooth and glistening with sweat, cocked the bat over his shoulder for another swing. With no place left to duck or hide, he was certain to connect.

  In desperation, Eric made the only move that was left to him. He reached up into the barbed wire that arced over them like a roof, and grabbed a handful of wire. The barbs burrowed hungrily into his palms and fingers sending flaming pain along his nerves all the way into his protesting brain. But Eric held on, tightening his grip, forcing the barbs even deeper into his skin. When he was certain it would support his weight, he kicked his legs up just as Dodd swung the bat.

  Eric’s feet made contact first, smacking into Dodd’s chest with a resounding thud that carried all of Eric’s weight and strength behind it. The impact sent Dodd sprawling backward, his arms windmilling as he tried to regain his balance.

  No use.

  The jeep was there to catch his fall. Dodd fell backward onto the jungle of blades and spikes, impaling himself in twenty different places. For a moment, his eyes crazy with pain, he tried to pry himself free, as if it were nothing more than sticky wet paint holding him there. But he couldn’t. The craziness faded from his eyes as death seeped into his body. The body jerked a few times, but he was already dead.

  And the jeep kept coming.

  Eric looked out at Thor, who shrugged helplessly and smiled. “What can I tell you, Ravensmith? You were terrific. Really. But I’ve got responsibilities to my people. They want entertainment and, well, you’re all we got. Sorry.” He gestured to the jeep driver, who revved the motor as he closed in on Eric.

  No need to look back, Eric realized. He could hear the saws breathing fire down his neck. And since there was no way to break through the barbed wire, there was only one direction left.

  Eric took it.

  He ran straight at the jeep. One step, two, then he was running up Dodd’s impaled body, finding footing on the meaty corpse. Then he was vaulting over the windshield of the jeep, barely clearing it and still avoiding the barbed wire ceiling. The driver flinched, ducking down into his seat. Eric grabbed the roll bar and swung down into the jeep’s back seat, at the same time reaching forward and twisting the head of the driver so sharply that even after the neck broke and the man relaxed into death, his head remained shifted at that same awkward angle. Eric’s bloody palm prints were on either cheek.

  The crowd cheered so loudly at the unpredictable turn of events, they even muted the chainsaws.

  Eric climbed out of the jeep, which was still rolling forward, the dead driver’s slumped body providing enough pressure on the gas pedal to keep inching it along. He limped slowly toward the open entrance of the Tomb, ignoring the slushy sound of Dodd’s body meeting the chainsaws, or the metallic groan as the saws ground through knife blades, then wood, then into the jeep itself before the burden became too much and they broke.

  Eric emerged from the tunnel to even louder cheering.

  Thor was waiting for him. He was smiling, but his eyes were grim. He spoke quietly, so only Eric could hear him. “Well, Ravensmith, I guess we’re back to the original deal. The weeds for your life.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” Eric said.

  Thor leaned closer, his smooth face almost touching Eric’s. “Fucking right, it’s reasonable. I could crush your fucking skull right now. One wrong move and I still may. Got me?”

  “Mind if I see the doctor before we finish our business?” Eric said. “I deal better when I’m not bleeding out of every limb.”

  “Sure. Go. Get patched up. But I want your ass back in that movie theater in an hour. Otherwise, you’ll be going back in the Tomb. With me.”

  “Hey, kid,” Eric called to Lynda’s son, Gary. “Give me a hand finding the doctor, okay?”

  Gary seemed confused as he looked to Thor first. Thor shrugged, then nodded. Gary went over and Eric leaned on him as they walked through the crowd. Dirty, smelly hands reached out and clapped Eric on the back.

  Several spoke to Gary, saying things like, “tough break, kid,” or “hard luck.”

  When they were finally clear of the crowd on the way to the infirmary, Eric asked Gary what they meant. “What were they talking about? Taking me to the doctor can’t be that bad a job.”

  “It’s not that,” Gary said. “It’s my dad.”

  “What about him?”

  Gary shrugged. “Back in the Tomb. He was the driver of the jeep.”

  “You again, huh?” Dr. Fishbine frowned.

  “In the flesh and blood,” Eric said.

  “Mostly blood. Sit over here.”

  Eric sat down on the cot that acted as an examining table. Gary Meyer backed away a few feet, but stayed. His expression was unreadable. Eric had tried to talk to him about what happened, about his mother, about anything, as they’d walked over, but the kid hadn’t been much of a talker. His father’s death didn’t seem to affect him that much, nor did his mother’s plight on Alcatraz. The kid shrugged everything off as if they were the problems of insects. He was more interested in Eric’s fighting abilities in defeating Dodd. He asked for pointer
s.

  “Not too bad,” Dr. Fishbine said, cutting away the shredded pants leg from the thigh wound. “Now let me see those hands.” Eric thrust them out palm up. “I’d avoid standing on my hands for a few weeks, but other than that I guess we can take care of you. Got some bruising and swelling around the forearm here.” He prodded and Eric winced. “Might be broken.”

  “Just bruised,” Eric said.

  “Suit yourself.” Dr. Fishbine began tending the wounds, each in turn, yet each with remarkable speed and skill. He knew what he was doing. His face was a little haggard from too many patients and too little sleep, but beneath the whiskers and the bags under the eyes were the brooding good looks of a compassionate man forced to harden himself. Eric knew that look well.

  Gary Meyer watched with fascination. Eric suspected his interest was less with the medical aspects than with a curiosity with how much damage had been done and whether or not Eric would cry out. Emotionally, the tall, skinny kid was a vacuum. Those were eyes that hadn’t found anything worth crying over or caring about in months, maybe longer. Eric thought of Tim, how much like Gary he might be by now. Especially under the influence of Dirk Fallows.

  “So what happened?” Dr. Fishbine asked as he wrapped the bandages around Eric’s hands.

  “Haven’t you ever watched before?”

  “The Tomb? Nope. No time for sports.” He gave a wry grin to Eric. “Besides, I wasn’t talking about that. I know what happened. You survived. What else do I need to know?”

  “Then what are you talking about?”

  “Out there. Alcatraz. You were kidnapped, remember? Guns, women, that sort of thing.”

  “Not much happened. They thought I was you.”

  “Jesus. What an insult to me.”

  Eric laughed. “They weren’t too happy about it either.”

  Dr. Fishbine’s expression turned serious. “How are they doing? Healthwise.”

  “Holding up.” Eric flexed his fist around the bandage. Felt better. “Let me ask you a question, Doctor.”

  “What?”

  “Is is possible to manufacture antibiotics?”