Adaptive Instinct (Survival Instinct) (9 page)

“You know you shouldn’t lock a blind man’s hands behind his back, right?” Hank commented.

The weasel ignored him.

Orson and Hank were directed toward the exit door while the weasel went to deal with the other two prisoners.  Outside, a gorilla guard was waiting for them.  He got Hank and Orson to stand together against one wall.  They were in the open block, where cells lined both sides of the long hallways on all five storeys.  The area in the middle was open, so that the light from a line of dirty and
heavily barred skylights could shine through the whole place.  It was so that a guard on one floor could hear and see what might be happening on another.  This was the general population of the prison, Ward A.

Once the two prisoners and the weasel had joined him, the gorilla guard led them through the prison.  Orson assumed he was being moved to a new cell, but he quickly figured out that this was not the case.  While a small handful of other prisoners was being prodded in the same direction they were going, larger groups were being prepared to be moved as well.  And judging by the leg and wrist irons, they were going outside the prison.

Orson and his group were led into the visitor centre.  Orson’s mother and stepfather tried to visit him once a month, so he recognized it right away.  They had believed him when he said he was innocent, that he was set up.  Even if he had lied about it, they would have believed him.  After entering the visitor centre, all the handcuffs were removed.  The weasel and the gorilla left, leaving only the assistant warden and some military-looking guy Orson had never seen, in charge of the whole room.

“There is clothing in the bags.  Find the bag with your name on it and put on the clothes inside,” the assistant warden told them.  The assistant warden seemed a little nervous about the military-looking man.

Orson looked around the visitor centre, and saw that several other prisoners had already been led here and changed their clothes.  At least two others were in the middle of changing.

“I’m going to need your help, Orson,” Hank spoke beside him.  “I don’t think I’m going to be able to read the labels and find my bag.”

“No problem.”  Orson began to walk around the room, navigating around the tables and reading the labels on the bags.  Behind him, Hank followed perfectly, not once bumping into anything.

“Mind telling me where we are?” Hank spoke again.  “I’m quite certain I’ve never been in this room.”

“We’re in the visitor centre.”  Orson knew that Hank had never been here.  His family never came to see him.  Why would they?  And he didn’t have any close friends.  Orson liked to think of himself as a close friend, but they didn’t need to use the visitor centre, now, did they?  The only person who ever came to see Hank was his lawyer, and there were special rooms set up for that in another part of the building.

Hank walked, turning his head from side to side.  It almost looked like he was assessing the room with his eyes behind those large, dark, plastic shades of his, but it was more likely he was assessing it with his ears.  He also had his hands out slightly in front of him, not searching or groping or
the way that one would normally think a blind man navigated, but just subtly held out, testing the air currents of the space.

Orson found their bags together on the same table, with one other bag that had already been emptied and abandoned as trash.  Hank sat himself down, and Orson slid his bag over in front of him.  By feel alone, Hank opened his bag and began taking the clothes out, feeling for buttons, creases, and hems to figure out what article of clothing was what.

Orson opened his own bag and found two complete sets of clothes inside.  One was the simple suit he had worn to his trial and in which he was then brought to the prison; the other was a new set of clothes he had never seen before.  The new set consisted of blue jeans, a simple grey T-shirt, a white pair of socks, and white tennis sneakers.  Orson didn’t know what was going on, but he decided to change into the new clothes; he felt he would be more comfortable in them.  Hank, on the other hand, wore his suit.  He had crisp black slacks, a shiny white shirt without a single spot on it and opened at the collar, and a black vest to top it off.  On his lean frame, with the spotless black wing tips and dark sunglasses, it was a very cool look.  Orson knew that Hank relied on shop clerks to tell him what looked good, and they did their job well.  Orson had never seen him in anything other than orange jump suits and white T-shirts, which didn’t look good on anybody, so the sudden change was almost a shock.  Hank also had a black jacket and tie, which he opted not to wear, but no doubt also looked very cool.  Hank was a very cool guy.

“I feel so much better now,” Hank said as he finished buttoning up his vest.  He could find the buttons on his shirt and vest better than Orson had ever been able to find his own.  “I feel so much more like myself.”

“I know what you mean,” Orson agreed.  He hadn’t realized just how much he had missed wearing a good pair of jeans.  He also hadn’t realized just how much weight he had put on.  His old pants might not even fit him anymore.  He used to be a skinny but well-muscled guy; now he was still muscled, but he had put on pudge.  His belly had some flab to it, and when he felt around, he realized his legs, arms, and even his face did as well.  He suddenly wanted a mirror, but there wasn’t one in sight.  He hadn’t noticed how much his body had changed in prison; he had only noticed that his dark hair was thinning.  What else might he be missing?  Might there be sags under his dark eyes?

“So what do you think is going on?”  Hank got down to business.

“I don’t know.  There are at least twelve other prisoners already in here,” Orson told him what he could.  “It also looks like there are maybe six clothing bags left sitting on other tables.”

“Twelve, plus us two, plus six more.  Twenty extra-special prisoners in all.”  Although Hank spoke aloud, Orson had the feeling he was talking to himself more than anyone.  “I know that was the assistant warden I heard
speaking to us when we got here, but who was the other man?  I could smell him and he had a vastly different scent than the guards and us prisoners.  It was like metal and dirt.”

“I don’t know
.  He looks like military.”

“
Looks
like military, or
is
military?” Hank asked for clarification.  He understood that Orson could just be comparing the man to a soldier.

“Hard to say,” Orson admitted.  “He has a large
rifle and a pistol on his hip.  He’s built like a block and has a shaved head.  He’s wearing camouflage pants, and a black T-shirt with some sort of insignia on the shoulder.  Oh, and he has dog tags on.”

“What about the way he’s standing?”

“He’s relaxed, but the rifle’s in his hands.  He keeps looking from us to the windows.”

“Seems a little loose for military but it’s hard to say,” Hank thought aloud again.  “You should try to get a look at that insignia.”

Orson nodded, but of course, Hank couldn’t see it.  He got up and made his way over to the assistant warden.

“What’s going on here?” Orson tried to ask in a nonchalant manner,
as if it was of no importance.

“You’ll be informed of what you need to know, when you need to know it,” the assistant warden answered him. 
Orson expected the answer.  The assistant warden glanced over to the pseudo-military man while he answered, but that man paid them no attention.  At least, not direct attention.  Either way, it gave Orson a good look at the patch on his shoulder.  He hurried back over to Hank and sat down next to him.

“I saw the patch,” he told him.  “It was an old-style key crossed with a sword inside a square.”

“Ah, a Marble Keystone mercenary.”  A faint smile touched Hank’s lips.  “Not real military.  Most of them are ex-military, ex-police force, and ex-security.  They’re close to being their own army.  If Keystone were a country, they would be.”

“I take it you had run
-ins with them before?”

Hank nodded.

Orson could easily imagine why Hank would have run in to them.  He used to work on the police force as a recordings analyst, and sometimes, detectives would bring him to crime scenes or let him sit in on interrogations.  He picked up on things they didn’t.  Mercenaries sounded like the kind of guys who would occasionally cause trouble and have to deal with the Leighton police force.

They continued to sit in silence for
a while.  The other six prisoners came in and changed into their clothes.  None of them knew what was going on and just sat at the round visitors’ tables, which were bolted to the floor along with the little benches around them.  They reminded Orson of tables at a fast-food restaurant.  He got tired of sitting around and went to the barred windows instead.  He had never noticed that these windows pointed toward the prison entrance.

Both sets of doors leading through the surrounding
stonewalls, to the outside world, were wide open.  A line of large, white trucks Orson had never seen before were streaming in and out in a staggered pattern, so that one was always passing through the gates.  The trucks were in two sections, with the front end looking like a Hummer, and the back end reminding Orson of armoured transport vehicles.  They looked like something he might have designed, had he not been in prison.  In between, was an accordion section and the back end appeared to be steered separately from the front.  On the roof of the trucks was the same Keystone insignia as the mercenary’s.  As the trucks pulled up, they would stop and an efficient group of men would offload a bunch of crates from them.  The prisoners Orson had seen in Ward A were then loaded into the back, and then the trucks would leave.

“What’s happening?”  Hank appeared at Orson’s side, startling him.  The blind man moved very silently. 

Orson described the trucks and the loading process.

“The plot thickens,” Hank muttered.  “Just provides more questions than answers.”

The day went on and on.  The prisoners in the visitors’ centre wandered about, sometimes looking out the windows, sometimes doing nothing but sitting at the tables.  A few finally brought out what little board games there were and started playing.  They were meant for children who came to visit and most of the pieces were missing, but they provided some entertainment for the long hours.  Orson learned from watching that these prisoners were all calm.  They occasionally asked the assistant warden something, but never demanded anything.  They were manageable.  Perhaps that was why they were picked over everyone else.  Although picked for what?

After several hours, more prisoners than usual were looking out of the windows at the same time.  Orson went over to check it out with Hank in tow.

“There are people,” Orson commentated for Hank.  “Most of the white trucks are gone, but two of them just came in and are offloading people.”

“What kind of people?  Returning prisoners?”

“No, normal people.  Average citizens.  It’s hard to say for sure from up here, but they look scared.”

“Could you all please take a seat?” the mercenary, who had yet to speak, suddenly barked.  “It’s time to tell you what’s happening.”

All the prisoners complied and found seats close together.  Even the assistant warden looked curious about what was going to be said.

The mercenary told them a story that, at first, sounded fictitious.  He told them about a virus that had escaped the Keystone laboratories and was now rampaging across Leighton.  Literally rampaging, as it turned people into mindless machines bent on nothing but violence.  When he used the word
zombie,
a few people laughed.  Orson smiled, but it fell when he looked at Hank.  Hank seemed to be taking this completely seriously.  He was very good at telling when people were lying or pulling his leg, by their voice alone, and Hank didn’t seem to think this man was lying.

The mercenary went on to tell them about how they were trying to save as many people as they could, but they needed safe places in which to bring them.  This prison was one of them.  The other prisoners were being moved to South Leighton Correctional, which was going to be very over-populated for the duration of the outbreak.  The prisoners currently in the visitors’ centre had been deemed close enough to the end of their sentence, as well as having behaved well enough, that they were being integrated back into society.  All the prisoners but Hank looked to the assistant warden to see if this was true.  A simple nod of his head said that it was.  Early parole due to zombie outbreak?  Orson was pretty sure that was something none of the prisoners had ever dreamed would happen.

The rest of the day continued with a new energy in the air.  The windows were looked out of more frequently.  A second mercenary came to the room to deliver them food, water, and cots for sleeping.  He also brought the contents of their cells, so Orson could continue reading to Hank when he wasn’t watching the world through barred glass.  Outside, more trucks continued to roll in at random times.  Through the windows, they could hear shots being fired.  A few zombies were apparently wandering within range.

Once, while Orson was watching, the back door of a truck was opened and a man launched himself out and attacked the nearest person.  He was swiftly shot in the head, as was the person he had attacked.  A mercenary went into the back of the truck and several more shots were fired, presumably into whoever was left in there.  When asked about it, their mercenary guard told them that had happened because of the infection.  Someone must have turned inside the truck
, and very likely infected the others.  The man who was attacked must have been bitten.  They shot him before the infection could spread from him to anyone else.  Due to the nature of the virus, headshots were the only ‘cure.’