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

much alone. If you don’t speak then they think you don’t hear and don’t think. They treat you like a doll or a pet, something not real. But at least they don’t kill you.”
    “But these are women, they’re not like those men you were with.”
    D.B. laughed harshly. “So they’re women. You think that makes them any less ruthless?” She dug the choke collar out of her waistband and slipped it over her head again. “You think the guys who put this here were the only ones to abuse me. Once they captured another girl, about twenty. They forced us to do stuff together while they watched. Later that night she tried to strangle me so she could steal my goddamn shoes.”
    “What happened?”
    “The others heard the noise and woke up. They watched, cheering us on, betting on who’d win. Like it was a goddamn football game or something. They didn’t try to stop us. Finally I bashed her head in with a rock. I don’t think she was dead, but they left her there anyway when we moved on the next day.” Her voice became thick and quivering. “You know what was weird about the whole thing?”
    “What?” Eric said.
    She tapped her New Balance running shoes. “These. They were a size too small for her. They wouldn’t have fit her anyway. Thing is, she knew it; she’d asked me about the size earlier. Yet she was willing to kill me for them anyway.” She sighed. “What do you make of that, Rock ’n’ Roll Man?”
    The lock to the door clicked and the door swung open. Maggie Shreeve walked in alone, a holster slung across her chest bandito-style . An old single-action Colt .45 was jammed into the holster. She looked at the two of them on the floor and gave a disapproving frown, as if she’d caught them in the middle of something. “Ready?”
    Eric turned to D.B. “Ready?”
    She stared dully at the ground, not speaking.
    “Tferrific,” he said, rising. Then to Maggie, “Let’s have the grand tour. And maybe you can let me know just what it is you want me to do?”
     
    “That’s the lighthouse,” Maggie pointed out. “Doesn’t work anymore. We scavenged the parts for other things.”
    “What about water?”
    She pointed to the huge water tower. “That holds enough to take care of us. There’s only a couple hundred of us. What the rain doesn’t replenish we bring over from the mainland.”
    “What about Thor and his men?”
    “We don’t go there. We go down the western coast. It’s a little tricky because that’s close to the Halo, but it’s worked so far. We have enough water to grow most of the food we need. We even have some cattle and chickens we keep over in the cell blocks.”
    “A chicken in every cell, huh?”
    She didn’t crack a smile. Instead she continued along, pointing at the buildings, identifying them. Eric nodded, taking it all in, waiting for the proposition. D.B. strolled silently beside him, maintaining her dazed expression and dumb act.
    “The women with children live over in the guards’ barracks. The rest of the women are divided between the guards’ barracks and the warden’s house. Depends on how they feel about kids. Over there is the power house. That’s where the single men stay.”
    “How many men?” Eric asked.
    “A dozen,” she shrugged, as if the number were insignificant. “Some pretty old, some pretty useless. A couple of them know their way around.”
    “How come they weren’t on the raiding party that went after the doctor?”
    Maggie spun and glared at him. “Why? You saying if men had gone they wouldn’t have made the same mistake?”
    “No. I’m asking why they didn’t go when it would have been easier for them to slip through Asgard without as much risk.”
    She stared into his eyes, searching for something. Her own dark eyes glittered with moisture. “We didn’t ask them.”
    “Why not?”
    Maggie shaded her eyes from the bright orange haze to the west. It looked like the sun was sitting on the ocean there, curtained behind the Halo.