The Killing Floor Blues (15 page)

We patted the guards down, took their belts and their radios, and had them kneel in the corner of the garage. “Yo,” one of the cons on the work shift called out, “we gettin’ out of here?”

“
We
are,” Westie said. “You can do whatever the hell you want. Just stay out of our way.”

The two Wildcats stood sleek, polished and ready, scooped-back steel skeletons painted desert tan. There wasn’t much to them but fat wheels, two rumble seats, and an engine built for speed. Jake trundled over with two scarlet plastic gas cans, and I held them steady while he strapped them onto the first buggy with bungee cords.

“This much gas should get us to civilization at least.” He nodded toward the open bay doors. Wispy clouds streaked a pearly violet sky as the last rays of sunlight escaped from the oncoming night. “Right across that tarmac, we take a hard left, and it’s a straight shot to the prison gates.”

The gates I couldn’t open.

I jogged up the stairs to the booth. A hard plastic box hung on the back wall, lined with tarnished keys tied to little paper tags. As I looked down through the bulletproof glass, the answer came to me. I just didn’t like it.

The transfer bus. Heavy-duty and reinforced with cold steel to keep prisoners in and would-be rescuers out. A machine like that, at full speed…sure, it could crash those gates and carve a hole for the Wildcats to blaze through. It’d also set off alarms from here to the Aberdeen Police Department thirty miles away. They’d have choppers in the sky, roadblocks waiting up ahead, and hard-eyed cops with itchy trigger fingers and orders to shoot to kill.

One person could crash the gates. And that person wasn’t going home. Not tonight.

Westie or Jake? Not a chance they’d throw away their shot at escape to save the rest of us. They weren’t the altruistic type. The other cons on the work detail? They weren’t that dumb; a fast car might have a shot on the open road, pinned between the prison guards and Aberdeen’s finest, but the bus was a lumbering target just waiting to get taken down.

Buddy? Buddy would do it. Set him in the driver’s seat, tell him what pedal to push, and point him toward the gate. He was so lost in his world of voices, he probably wouldn’t even ask me why.

The perfect answer. But I couldn’t do it.

Putting aside the vision, putting aside the possibility that the salvation of the world was resting in Buddy’s hands, he was…innocent. A genuine innocent. The fact that he’d never suspect a betrayal was exactly why I
couldn’t
betray him. Not if I wanted to live with myself.

“Ruthless,” I muttered, remembering Naavarasi’s words. “Just not ruthless enough. Damn it.”

I rummaged through the plastic box, checking tags and took the keys for the Wildcats. And the key for the bus.

I jogged down the steps and tossed a key to Westie, underhand. He caught it with a grin. “We’re ready to roll. Buggies are loaded and fueled. So how are you gonna get those gates open for us?”

“The hard way,” I said, waving Jake and Buddy over. “My original plan fell through, so here’s how we’re gonna do this. Jake, Westie, each of you take one buggy and a pair of night-vision goggles. Buddy, ride shotgun with Jake. I’ll be in that transfer bus, about a hundred feet ahead of you. I crash the gates; you blast right on by. Take a hard right the second you clear the second gate, point the buggies southeast and don’t stop for anything.”

Jake’s brow furrowed as I tossed him the other key. “What about you? We’ve got a spare seat. We’ll stop for you—”

“Look, once I hit those gates they’ll have a chopper in the sky within two minutes, with more on the way. If you get caught in a searchlight, it’s all over. And if you take the time to stop for me, you
will
get caught. I’ll keep the bus moving as long as I can, to try and draw their attention away.”

Westie shook his head. “They’ll stop you eventually, friend. And they won’t be gentle about it neither.”

“I told you I’d get you out of here,” I said. “Don’t get caught and make a liar out of me.”

“Damn, man.” Jake looked down at the key in his hands like it was a million-dollar bill. “Thanks. Don’t know what else to say.”

“My help isn’t free. First, make sure Winslow knows my debt is squared.” I pointed at Buddy. “Second, you get this guy wherever he needs to go, no questions asked. If he’s gotta talk to somebody at the bottom of the ocean, you make sure his ass gets on a submarine.”

“It’s not that far,” Buddy murmured. Then he frowned. “I don’t
think
it’s that far.”

“Deal,” Jake said, and he clasped my hand in a vice grip.

I shook with Westie next. He let out a nervous chuckle. “You’re one weird bastard, but I’m glad to know you. If you make it out of this alive, first round of drinks is on me.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” I said.

I turned to Buddy. “This is why,” he told me.

“Why what?”

“This is why I told you I was sorry, back in my cell,” he said. “I saw when I closed my eyes. Saw the buggies. Three seats, not four.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “Just get out of here and do whatever you need to do, all right?”

He wrung his hands, shifting from foot to foot, his eyes darting around the garage. Everywhere but on me.

“There’s something else,” I said. “What is it?”

“The voices told me something. They say it’s really important, that you have to hear it. But it’s bad news and I don’t want to say.”

“I can take bad news, Buddy. Give it to me straight.”

He scrunched up his face and tilted his head, listening.

“They say…you’re going to die here. They say you
have
to die here.”

“Tell your voices,” I said. “I don’t believe in fate, prophecies,
or
dying young. I’ll make it out of here. Just not tonight.”

“I just deliver the news,” he said in a small voice.

Outside the garage bay, the purple sky faded to black. Stars twinkled in the distance, as far away from here as I wanted to be. I patted Buddy on the shoulder and walked away.

“All right,” I called out, “remember, stay about a hundred feet behind me. Once you’re through, hit the desert and don’t stop. No looking back.”

“Hey,” shouted one of the other prisoners on Jake’s detail. “What about us?”

I paused, my hand on the bus door, and shrugged. I looked at the two cars between us, freshly washed and waxed.

“You’ve got two choices,” I said. “You can stay right here, turn yourself in peacefully, and maybe get some good-behavior time knocked off your sentence. Or you can grab the keys to those cars and follow us out. Odds are you get rammed off the road or gunned down before you reach I-80, and nobody’s ever gotten farther than that, but hey, maybe you’ll be the first. Somebody’s gotta win the lottery, right?”

I climbed onto the bus while they scrambled for the key box, falling over each other in their desperation. I wasn’t surprised. Grimly amused, maybe, but not surprised.

I sat in the stiff vinyl driver’s seat and buckled up. The engine fired to life with a throaty growl and the hood rattled like it had a stallion underneath trying to kick its way out. The cabin filled with the acrid smell of diesel and gunpowder.

As I stomped on the clutch and wrestled the cracked plastic shift knob into first gear, I couldn’t help but smile.
Corman always told me learning to drive stick would come in handy
, I thought,
but this probably wasn’t the situation he had in mind when he taught me how.

The headlights clicked on, halogens blazing against the night. I took one deep breath, steeling my nerves, and started to roll. The bus rumbled out of the bay and onto the tarmac outside, and I hauled the wheel around to make a sharp left turn. I saw the Wildcats in the rear-view mirror, swinging into position behind me.

There they were, about a thousand feet ahead: the prison gates, one just after the other, standing silent and tall and strong.

I punched the gas.

The bus rolled, picking up speed, my arm aching as I wrenched my way up through the gears as fast as the clutch would let me. Halfway there, a spotlight hit my windshield and blinded me in a wash of white light. A few seconds later, alarms began to howl.

I couldn’t see, but I didn’t need to. I held the wheel steady and braced for impact.

The bus rammed the first gate at fifty miles an hour, and the world turned into a blur of shrieking metal and hot light. I jolted against the nylon seat belt, my head lurching forward and a searing pain lancing down the back of my neck. I fought to keep the wheel steady, my foot clamped down on the gas like it was the only thing standing between life and death.

Have to keep my speed up
, I thought, frantic.
If I can’t bust through the second gate, we’re all dead
.

The spotlight’s beam slipped off the cracked windshield just in time for me to see the gate coming. Gray smoke spit from the bus’s crumpled hood in heavy plumes—and beyond it, looming in my blurry vision, the oncoming wall of steel.

Sparks exploded as the bus thundered through, tearing down the second gate, the windshield exploding in my face. I threw up an arm to cover my eyes, shoulder wrenching as the second impact jolted me hard enough for the seat belt to bruise my chest, and the wheel slipped from my grasp. It spun hard, the bus careening left, rising up on two wheels before slamming back down again. A tire blew with a crack like a gunshot, rubber shredding and the rim screeching against the asphalt.

The bus shot off-road, rumbling across the desert flats. A thorny cactus went down under the hood. Smoke gushed from the engine and billowed in through the broken windshield. The smoke clogged in my throat, and I coughed myself hoarse with one hand on the wheel and one clamped over my mouth and nose.

Just get it back on the road
, I thought.
I can do this. I can
—

Then I was weightless, just for a heartbeat, as the right wheels jolted up on an uneven ridge and the bus keeled onto its side.

The world turned black and white, and all I could hear was a distant clamoring bell. I moved like a man sinking in quicksand.

The seat belt clicked. It boomed like a cannon in the warbling silence. I pushed myself up, or sideways, trying to orient myself in the capsized bus. My entire world was shattered glass and smoke and pain. I could move, though. Nothing broken. Everything bruised. Shallow cuts decorated my body like tribal tattoos, seeping.

The exit yawned above my head, accordion door hanging open and limp from a twisted swing arm. Using the side of the driver’s seat as a step stool, I climbed. Reaching up, taking hold of the door’s edge, groaning as I pulled myself out one agonizing inch at a time. Finally out, I flopped down on the ruined bus’s side, rolled over and stared up at the stars. Letting the frigid air of a desert night wash over me.

It was strangely peaceful.

Blinding light flooded my vision, and the shrill rotors of a helicopter ripped away the silence. Strobing lights painted the desert in blue and red, and I heard voices now, shouting at me from behind their car doors as the chopper above whipped up a dusty whirlwind. I ignored them. I just lay there.

Eventually, they came and got me.

*     *     *

New voices were arguing about me under angry fluorescent lights. I heard words like “Ad Seg” and “concussion.” Then calloused hands shoved me into a small, dark room and left me there.

I slept, I think.

My senses returned and brought pain with them. I flexed my muscles one at a time, moving slowly, taking an inventory of the damage. Fingers, wrists, elbows, shoulders, counting pulled muscles and bruises. They’d stripped my clothes off, and the faint bar of light that shone under my cell door let me see the aftermath of the bus crash. Angry purple splotches spread across my skin like birthmarks painted by Salvador Dali.

I slept some more. Woke up sharper, but with a faint ringing in my ears. Waves of nausea washed over me, coming and going without warning.

The cell was smaller than a walk-in closet. In the shadows, when I managed to stand up at all, I could make out a concrete slab with a paper-thin mattress, no pillow, and a stainless-steel toilet against the back wall. A sluice drain sat in the middle of the concrete floor. With no clothes, there was nowhere I could sit that didn’t press at least some of my naked skin against cold, damp stone. If I stood, the soles of my feet froze. I stood anyway, walking in place, forcing my body to move over my muscles’ protests. I had to stay in motion, and keep as limber as I could.

A narrow slot in the middle of the door rattled open. I recognized the piggish eyes leering through at me. Jablonski.

“Hey, Faust,” he said, “shower time.”

Finally
, I thought with a wave of relief. A chance to see light, to clean the dried blood and feel human again—

His face moved away, and I had just a second to recognize what took its place—the brass nozzle of a fire hose—before the water blasted in. The eruption hit me square in the chest with the force of a prizefighter’s fist, knocking me to the floor. The ice-cold water rained over me, Jablonski’s laughter drowning out the hiss of the hose, and I scrambled on hands and knees to take cover behind the bunk. I crouched there, curled into a fetal ball with my eyes squeezed shut, and waited for it to end.

The hose turned off. The slot slammed shut. I shivered, my teeth rattling and jaw clenched, freezing in the darkness.

*     *     *

Time passed. Two weeks? A month? The cold burned my skin and turned seconds into hours. The slot rattled open and I hid, scurrying for cover behind the bunk like a roach fleeing the kitchen light.

Sometimes, when the slot opened, it was the hose again. Sometimes it was a tray of food. I couldn’t tell—there wasn’t any rhyme or reason to it. This time it was the tray. I snatched it, scrambling back to my hiding place in the corner. Squatting down and digging into the food with my fingers. The meal was always the same, some kind of processed putrid loaf of random glop blended together. I was hungry, so I ate.

The next time the slot opened, I saw a face. Not Jablonski’s but I hid anyway. The light hurt my eyes.

“Faust,” a voice hissed. “Can you hear me?”

I knew the voice. Emerson. Would he hurt me? I wasn’t sure. I peered over the edge of the bunk, cautious.

“Hurry,” he whispered. “We’re between a shift change, so I don’t have long. I’ve got to talk to you. I can help you. Come closer.”

I frowned. It sounded like a trick. Still, I crept closer to the light. A tiny spark burned deep in my heart. It felt something like hope.

“I can get you out of here, but I need your help,” he said. I got closer to the slot, our eyes meeting. My vision blurred, stinging from the light.

“How long?” I croaked. My voice sounded strange, like it belonged to somebody else.

“What?”

“How long have I been in here?”

“Four days,” Emerson said.

My world tilted sideways. I shook my head.

“N-no, that’s not possible. Longer than that. Two weeks at least.”

“You’re disoriented, and your perceptions are skewed. Solitary…does things to people’s heads. Look, I’ve got a way to get you out, but you’ve got to help me. Faust? Can you hear me?”

I could hear him. As my senses slowly returned, as I remembered how to think like a man—not the feral beast four days in the dark and wet and freezing cold had made me into—I recognized that burning in my heart for what it really was.

It wasn’t hope.

It was rage.

And inside my mind, the beast and the man shook hands and agreed to work together.

“Tell me,” I growled.

“I’m undercover,” Emerson told me. “I’m an investigator for the Nevada Department of Corrections. We know something’s wrong here, something
very
wrong, but Rehabilitation Dynamics has deep pockets; every time we’ve tried to schedule a full inspection, we get sandbagged from higher up the food chain.”

“So you got a job as a guard. Figured you’d investigate from the inside, on your own.”

“Exactly. Look, Eisenberg Correctional has one of the highest inmate death rates in the
nation
. It doesn’t get reported because the deaths are almost always people with no family, no outside ties, and life sentences. People who nobody will miss. Statistically, it just doesn’t work.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Most of those dead men were tenants of Hive B.”

“Exactly. And Hive B is hermetically sealed. The guards here have a fraternity; they’re
tight
with each other, too tight for me to infiltrate. You don’t get assigned to a shift in Hive B until they trust you like a brother.”

“Which isn’t you. Meaning you can’t get in to find out what’s really happening in there.”

“Right,” Emerson said, “but you can. And you will. I just saw the paperwork: you’re being transferred tomorrow.”