Jason Frost - Warlord 05 - Terminal Island by Jason Frost - Warlord 05 Read Free Book Online

Mrs. Martin Van Butcell, in 1775, whose will specified that her husband could keep control of her fortune only as long as her body remained above ground. The husband had her embalmed and placed in a glass-lidded case in a sitting room. He even held visiting hours.”
    “You’re stalling me just like you stalled them last night.”
    “I’m talking about death. What it means to different people. In Borneo, the dead were often kept among the living while the body decomposed. They were even given food and water. The Indonesians used to attach mystical importance to the body’s disintegration, carefully collecting the liquids produced by decomposition and later mixing them with rice and eating the rice.”
    “Tell it to Uncle Ben.” She stood up, tested the moccasins. The glue held. “I don’t think I want to hear anymore.”
    “Okay.” He dumped the rest of the glue from the hardhat. There hadn’t been enough vinyl for a second pair of moccasins.
    D.B. walked over and stood in front of him. Eric had made the halter so the word don’t was visible over her left breast. She’d laughed when she’d put it on and kissed him on the cheek. There was no smile on her face now. “I lied,” she said. “I want to hear more. I like it when you act like a teacher.”
    Eric smiled.
    “I just hope you were clearer in the classroom than you are now.”
    “I’ll try,” he said. “The point is, as a civilized people we make up rules, standards to live by. But those rules depend on need. Even concerning death, the one thing all people have in common, all people hold in awe. In some South American and European countries where space is relatively scarce, people often lease graves. Then after three or five years, the bodies are exhumed and the bones stuck in a communal grave.”
    “Lease, huh? Not even an option to buy?”
    “You see how that concept would be disgusting to some people? Or the Zoroastrians, who thought the human body so unclean that to bury it would contaminate the pure elements of the earth.”
    D.B. looked into Eric’s eyes. “You saying that what those graverobbers were doing wasn’t wrong?”
    “Capturing us was wrong. Wanting to sell us was wrong. The rest was survival.”
    “I knew it,” D.B. said. “Last night I thought about it. ‘Why didn’t Doc Rock kill her?’ I asked myself. ‘Why didn’t he shoot that one-eyed, one-horned flying purple people-eater?’ I thought about it the whole night, even when we were out exploring.”
    “Did you reach a conclusion?”
    “At first I thought it was ’cause she was a looker. Even you must get horny sometimes. But nope, that didn’t figure. You could have had me any time you wanted. It had to be something else. Then it hit me. You looked at her and you saw yourself. Not what you are, but what you’re becoming. Or at least afraid of becoming.”
    Eric threw another log on the fire. “Gold star.”
    “I’m not dumb just because I’m a kid, you know.”
    “I know.”
    “I mean, I’m a singer, an artist. I’m sensitive to people. Like I know how hard you have to get to keep going after this Fallows guy. How you have to guard against becoming the same kind of guy he is. If you get to be just like him, then what good will it do Tim to rescue him. Right?” She turned away, kicked some dirt into the fire. “I tease you, but I know why you won’t sleep with me, even though I can tell there are times you want to. There’s a line you’ve drawn between what you have to do to survive, to get Tim back, and what you have to do to remain civilized, whatever that means. I’m part of that line. Touching a kid would be wrong and eighteen is still a kid. To you.”
    Eric reached out both hands and grasped her shoulders, turning her to face him. Her eyes brimmed with tears. “Not as much as before.”
    “Yeah, we’ll see.”
    Eric glanced up at the Long Beach Halo. D.B.’s insight had surprised him. But she had not gone far enough, not recognized how