Read Jason Frost - Warlord 04 - Prisonland for Free Online Page A

gang, dragged through the wilderness by Dodd, and now nearly drowned by Eric had caused her mental collapse. He felt the burden of his own responsibility toward her breakdown.
    “It’s all right,” he said soothingly, patting her shoulder. “It’s all right.”
    Finally her laughing trickled down to mere chuckling as she turned to him with a smile and said, “Dr. Ravensmith, I presume?”

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FIVE
     
    “You talk?” Eric said.
    “Yeah,” she nodded. “I talk. I also walk, move my head side to side, and if you pull this tab at the back of my neck, I even wet my pants. The perfect Christmas gift for that hard-to-please little girl.”
    “Cute. But how do you know me?”
    “Think back, Dr. Ravensmith. About a day ago. We were at this camp with a bunch of crude scum. There was a poker game. You fell out of a tree. People were killed. Ring a bell?” She plucked a blade of grass and began chewing one end.
    “How’d you like another free trip to the bottom of that stream?”
    “How’d you like to walk funny for a couple days?”
    Eric sighed. “I don’t have time for this.”
    “Hey, mister, I didn’t ask you to come charging in here to try to rescue me. So don’t expect anything in return. You want me, you’re gonna have to take me like those other guys.” She took off her sunglasses and glared into Eric’s face.
    “I don’t want you,” Eric said. “I didn’t come after you, I came after Dodd.”
    “Yeah?” She put her dark glasses back on and studied Eric closer. “Okay. I can buy that. I’m glad, too. I’m glad you weren’t trying to do anything heroic or dumb like that.” She removed her glasses again. “Well, at least you’re honest. Still, if you were smart you would’ve lied, taken credit anyway. Might’ve gotten into my pants that way.”
    “I don’t want into your pants, girl. I’ve got my own.”
    She cracked a cynical smile. “Yeah, sure.”
    Eric didn’t blame her. After what she’d been through she had a right to be suspicious, to be downright hostile. It was the nature of this new world that the strong exploit the weak for whatever gratification they could get.
    “You know my name,” Eric said, “which you could have overheard at camp. But you called me ‘Doctor,’ which no one there did.”
    She fidgeted with the choke collar around her neck.
    “Want me to help you take that off?” Eric offered.
    “No!” She recoiled violently. “I want to keep it. A memento, a reminder of exactly what could happen to me in this place. It keeps me careful.”
    “How do you know me?” Eric pursued.
    “From school. The university.”
    “You weren’t one of my students.” Eric would occasionally forget the names from the parade of hundreds of students he’d taught, embarrassed when one would approach him on campus or in a movie theater and say hello and he couldn’t remember their name. But he remembered faces. Hers was not familiar.
    “No, I wasn’t. But I visited the school and stayed in the dorm with my girlfriend, Tina. I was planning to attend in the fall. She pointed you out. You were famous on campus. Your scandalous past and all. I think Tina had a crush on you.” She paused, looked at Eric. “You ever fuck your students?”
    “No, but the bulldog mascot and I had an understanding.”
    She laughed. That crackling cricket laugh. “Okay, okay. I’ll stop trying to shock you, Professor.”
    “Eric.”
    “Sure, Eric.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “D.B.”
    “Debbie?”
    “No. D.B. The initials. The name of Holden Caulfield’s older brother in Catcher in the Rye . Didn’t you ever read that book?”
    “Once or twice.”
    “It’s not my real name, just my in-between name.”
    “In-between name?”
    “Yeah. Temporary. Until I come up with a better one.”
    “What’s wrong with the one your parents gave you?”
    Her face went cold and hard. There was a quiver to her lips that she struggled to control. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with it. Only