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

don’t give a shit what Thor wants,” Dr. Fishbine said. He nodded at Eric. “I won’t even spit on this moron until he takes that choke collar off her.”
    D.B. gave a little smirk to Eric as he slipped the collar up over her head. Eric draped the leash over his shoulder.
    “Don’t mind the doc,” Grub explained to Eric. “He’s kinda gruff, but he’s a helluva doc.”
    “And he’s full of shit,” Dr. Fishbine said, leading them on a brisk march through the wards past rows of patients. “This girl needs iron in her diet, for Chrissake. Isn’t there anybody left in California with a scrap of brain?”
    Eric heard him talking but suddenly he wasn’t listening. The skin in his face tightened and his heart felt like a flaming log in a block of frozen ice. The man in the third cot. Sleeping.
    Dodd.
    “What’s wrong with him?” Eric asked.
    “What’s it to you?” Dr. Fishbine snapped.
    “Curious,” was all Eric said, but there was an edge in his voice, a tone of menace that stopped all three of them.
    The doctor stared at Eric a moment before resuming his march. “Observation. He came in a few days ago. Fever, chills. Preliminary symptoms of plague. Gave him some tetracycline and he seems fine. I want to take one more blood culture and sputum sample.”
    “What about aspirates of enlarged nodes?”
    The young doctor looked pleased. “You a doctor?”
    “Had some medical training.”
    Dr. Fishbine studied Eric closely. “Soldier?”
    “For a while.”
    ” ’Nam?”
    “For a while.”
    “Me too. Orderly.”
    “Like on TV,” Grub said. “ M.A.S.H .”
    “Only without the laughs,” the doctor said, brushing back a hunk of red hair. “What’s your name?”
    Eric hesitated, saw no point in lying. “Ravensmith.”
    The doctor thought about it a moment, shrugged, and started to walk on. Then stopped abruptly, snapped his fingers. “Ravensmith from Night Shift? The one who put Colonel Dirk Fallows away for that massacre?”
    Eric didn’t answer.
    “Yeah,” the doctor nodded. “We’re about the same age. I remember you from TV.”
    Grub looked confused. It had been a national scandal for months, all through Fallows’s trial, but Grub didn’t know what they were talking about. “This guy a stoolie?” he asked angrily.
    “Never mind, Grub,” Dr. Fishbine said. “You wouldn’t understand.” He pointed at the leash and collar dangling from Eric’s shoulder. “Hard to believe the same man that did such a heroic thing is capable of using that.”
    “Times have changed, doctor, or haven’t you noticed?”
    “Yeah, I’ve noticed.”
    “One might be just as curious about you. What you’re doing here.”
    Dr. Fishbine grinned. “Got out of the army, had an attack of social consciousness. A lot of that going around then, remember? Anyway, after med school and residency I started a GP practice and volunteered a few spare hours work at San Quentin. Just my luck the damned quake hits when I’m lancing some con’s hemorrhoid. Poor guy.”
    D.B. laughed and the doctor laughed too.
    “When the walls came tumbling down at San Quentin, Frank Stovell, or Thor as he now calls himself, grabbed me and took me along.” He held up his hands. “So here I am, fighting the plague and bandaging the wounds they inflict on each other. Had a bunch of AIDS victims last month, Thor sent a bunch of his men over to kill them all. Right, Grub?”
    “Yeah, we got rid of ’em nice and clean. Burned the whole lot of them too, just like Thor said.”
    “Now you know what I’m up against. One doctor for five hundred people, and another few hundred drop-in patients from the outside.”
    “Don’t you have any help, nurses or anything?” Eric asked.
    Dr. Fishbine laughed. “Yeah, sure. When Thor wants to punish somebody, but not enough to kill him, he sends him over here to work for me. Kind of like not having enough money to pay for your meal at a restaurant and having to wash dishes.”
    “I say a bullet