Free Jason Frost - Warlord 04 - Prisonland by Jason Frost - Warlord 04 Page B

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