better pass.”
“And if I don’t?”
Grub laughed at the notion. “Then you gonna find out why they call him Thor.” Grub eyed D.B., then stroked her shoulder with his dirty fingers. “Nice piece, man. How much?”
“Haven’t decided yet.”
“Keep me in mind, huh?” He reached out and squeezed one of D.B.’s breasts. She didn’t budge.
Eric slapped his hand away.
Grub’s eyes blazed as he spun toward Eric, thumbing back the hammer of his gun.
“No free samples,” Eric grinned good-naturedly.
Grub relaxed a bit, but his face was still grim as he stared at Eric. Finally, he shrugged it off and waved for Eric and D.B. to follow him. “C’mon, we don’t have to stand in any fucking line.”
He led them past the line of people, around some curtained partitions, through a couple doors. One room was a kind of examination room. Five women sat around naked while a man went from one to another, spreading their legs, shining a flashlight, examining them. The women were all either fat, bony, ugly, or maimed. They didn’t even look up when the three of them paraded through.
“Gynecologist?” Eric asked Grub.
Grub snorted. “Him? Used to be a pimp. Doc Fishbine trained him to check twats because Thor didn’t want them spreading gonorrhea or syphilis. Shit, almost everybody’s got herpes around here anyway. Last thing we need is to wipe out our army with some cunt rot.”
“I haven’t seen too many women around.”
“There ain’t any women around. Just a few pigs like them you seen back there. Might as well fuck a dog.” He laughed. “And there’s plenty that do around here. Most these guys been in prison for a lot of years. They know how to get along without women. Only we ain’t gonna have to much longer. Thor’s seeing to that.”
“How?”
Grub sneered. “You ain’t gonna be around long enough to worry about it.”
“That a threat?”
“Hell no. Just means most people don’t stay here more than a couple days. The rest is Thor’s men. It ain’t the safest place in the world, especially if you got something of value.” He looked at D.B. “My advice is you sell her soon as possible then haul ass outta here. You go walkin’ around Asgard with her much more and by tonight they’ll be lining up outside your room to slit your throat. She’s a choice cut, sport.”
D.B.’s skin was red with anger. She opened her mouth to say something to Grub and Eric yanked her choke collar, strangling her words.
“Thanks for the tip,” Eric told Grub.
“No sweat, man. That’s why I told ya I’d take her off your hands.”
“I’ll think it over.”
Grub led them deeper into the warehouse, down corridors of patients. Some were on cots, others just on blankets spread out on the floor. Eric noticed a lot of wounds; gunshot, knife, razor. Bruises and broken bones were also popular. Fighting was a way of life here, like an old wild west town. Arguments were settled by combat, the winner taking everything from the loser; the loser coming here to be repaired until he could find someone to defeat and take away their belongings. It had an odd sort of purity to it, Eric admitted.
“Hey, Doc,” Grub hollered across one room lined with patients.
A young man in a stained lab coat was bending over a man without an arm, checking the bandage on the stump. He lifted his head at Grub’s yelling and shook his head. “Quiet, asshole.”
Grub chuckled. “Sorry.”
Eric was surprised. Grub was not the kind of man to let anyone talk to him like that without turning it into a brawl. Certainly he wasn’t afraid of the doctor, a man about Eric’s age, though shorter and slighter of build. He had a shock of unruly red hair swirling from his head. He stared at Grub with a contemptuous frown but Grub, rather than crushing the doctor into sand, smiled as if pleased by the attention. This doctor obviously carried a lot of respect in Asgard.
“Thor wants you to take care of these two right away.”
“I