The Killing Floor Blues (20 page)

My eagerness, when the guards came to get me, was a smoke screen. I didn’t want them looking too deep into my cell, noticing the woman crouched in the farthest, darkest corner. Waiting, patient as a cobra.

When they brought me down to the arena floor, lining me up with the other prisoners, I had a pretty good view up toward my cell. I got to see Vasquez trundling over with a toolbox, opening the door—and the hand that clamped over his wrist, hauling him into the darkness before he could scream for help.

Not long after, I glimpsed the spidery shadow that skittered across the ceiling of the hive high above our heads. Clinging to the concrete, making her way toward the guard tower.

Soon the bodies rained down, terrifying the crowd into a petrified, confused silence. And then Caitlin joined the party.

I’d been running the numbers. Seven guards spaced out along the gallery floor, plus Lancaster with his long-barreled .45. Maybe fifty people in the audience, and more than a few bodyguard types with conspicuous bulges under their tailored jackets. Lousy odds, and I knew I should be worried.

But as time stood still, like the arc of a roller coaster as it crests that first hill and gets ready to plunge, a strange, giddy elation washed over me.

“Lover,” Caitlin said.

I looked to her. She threw back one side of her coat, like a gunslinger at high noon. Her fingers traced the brass handle of the coiled black bullwhip on her belt.

Then she smiled, and whispered, “
Dance with me
.”

A guard went for his weapon while the deck of cards dropped from my sleeve. Two cards whipped through the air as his pistol boomed. One flew between him and Caitlin, catching a bullet in its heart, and the other sliced open his throat from ear to ear.

Caitlin’s bullwhip lashed down upon the concrete, rippling with hellfire, and the crowd—screaming now, realizing this wasn’t part of the show—knocked over tables and fell over each other scrambling to get away. I hit the ground, rolling, a stray bullet whining over my head, and snatched up the dead guard’s piece. Jablonski was right next to him, swinging his gun around to drop a bead on me. I jumped up from a crouch, grabbed his gun’s muzzle, put my barrel up against his wrist, and pulled the trigger.

Jablonski shrieked as his wrist blew apart, shattered bones jutting through a ragged, gushing hole. I kept hold of the muzzle as I turned, using him as a human shield, and emptied my clip into the closest guard. Then I dropped the gun, yanked his away, and used that one instead, cracking off two quick shots at a bodyguard who felt like playing hero. I missed, but he hunkered down behind a flipped-over table, pinned down for a second.

One of the spectators I recognized—the golf pro—went sliding past me. He was on the ground, Caitlin’s whip coiled around his throat and his body engulfed in devouring flames as she reeled him in like a prize fish.

Rule number one in a gunfight: stop moving and you’re dead. I ran straight for the tables, snapping off wild shots on the go, and jumped. My shoe hit the edge of the capsized cocktail table, sending me up and over, and I put three rounds into the bodyguard’s panicked face. I landed hard on the other side, bullets chipping into the wood behind me and chewing away the improvised cover one chunk at a time.

I pulled the trigger again, hammer slapping down on an empty chamber, and threw the empty gun aside. The bodyguard’s piece, still clutched in his cold hand, was a sleek nine-millimeter in blue chrome. I snatched it up and sprang out of hiding before the guards could flank me. Too slow: ten feet away, one of Jablonski’s buddies had me dead to rights, sighting me down his barrel like a pro target shooter. Then Caitlin’s free hand flung up and a silver dagger, long and thin and gleaming like a needle, whistled through the air and buried itself four inches in his ear.

Another guard burst from the guard tower door, smart enough to go for the big guns. He clutched a pump-action shotgun, aiming it for Caitlin’s back. I sent a handful of cards flying. The shotgun roared and the cards dropped, taking the hit for her. She spun, crouching, and her whip cracked as it coiled around his ankle and yanked him off his feet just before his flesh ignited.

Over the screams, over the crackling of flames and gunfire, Caitlin’s delighted laughter rang out. Her wild grin mirrored mine as we went back-to-back, picking off the last of Lancaster’s men. The audience had fled, a screaming mob headed for the security gates, desperate to escape.

At last, silence.

Corpses littered the killing floor, sprawled across overturned tables and chairs, some riddled with bullets and some charred black. Caitlin casually flicked her wrist, calling her whip back and quenching the flames, then coiled it around her bent elbow. I leaned against her, and she nuzzled my shoulder as we both caught our breaths.

“We should do this more often,” she murmured.

Strained whimpers caught my ear. I turned. Jablonski knelt in a pool of his own blood, clutching the ruin of his wrist.

“Oh, we’re not finished just yet,” I told her.

I walked over and nudged Jablonski with my shoe.

“Hey. Asshole. Get up.”

He looked up at me, tears streaming from his squinting eyes. “Just kill me already. Just
do
it.”

“Changed my mind. I’m not gonna kill you,” I said. “Not if you do everything I say. I need you. I have to get back into Hive C. What’s the best way to do that?”

“Th-the whole place is gonna be locked down by now. Automatic fail-safe if the alarms go off.”

I pressed the barrel of my gun to his forehead.

“And that fail-safe can be deactivated
by
…”

“Central—central security. They’ve got overrides for the entire prison.”

“Do they have eyes on this place? Security cameras?”

“No, they’re blind when it comes to Hive B. The warden puts most of the new guards in there, the ones we aren’t sure we can trust yet. All they’ll know is a riot alarm went off and they should call for help from the highway patrol.”

“Good. On your feet. You’re gonna take us there.”

Klaxons droned through the deserted halls, every loudspeaker blaring a warning. Jablonski stumbled ahead of us, squeezing his wrist to try and stop the bleeding as he led the way. The stampede of escaping spectators had left us an open path.

“They’ll be buttoned up in there,” he whined. “It’s like a panic room; nobody gets in or out when the alarms sound.”

“Let me worry about that,” Caitlin told him.

The door to central security looked like solid steel, the only opening a tiny window laced with reinforced wire. Caitlin waved us back, out of sight. Then she ran to the door and hammered on it, twisting her face into a mask of raw panic.

“Help,” she cried, “I’m all alone out here. You have to let me in!”

I heard a muffled refusal from the other side.

“There are prisoners everywhere,” Caitlin begged. “You can’t let them get me, you can’t!
Please!
”

After a moment’s hesitation, the lock clicked.

Caitlin barged in. I was right behind her, shoving Jablonski and using him for a shield, one hand on his collar and one on the gun. On the other side, one guard lay on the thin blue carpet, knocked flat by the swinging door. Another two stood by a bank of controls and security monitors that ran the length of the far wall.

One went for his pistol. I put mine to Jablonski’s head.

“Uh-uh. You do, he dies.”

He was loyal enough, or dumb enough, to freeze. Caitlin moved fast, stripping the three guards’ weapons and herding them into one corner of the room. I studied the grainy black-and-white monitor feeds, trying to get eyes on Raymundo.

“A few days ago,” I said, “there was a riot in the yard. A few Calles bangers got sent to solitary. They still in there?”

“I…I think so,” one of the guards said. “I’m not sure.”

“And how do I get in there?”

“Y-you can’t. Not from here, I mean. Ad Seg is all manual. They never updated the cell doors.”

“Okay,” I said, taking a step back and rubbing my chin. “So what you’re telling me is all the
other
cell doors
can
be controlled from here?”

Nobody answered. I put my thumb on the hammer of my gun and cocked it back. A meaningless gesture on most modern pistols, but thanks to Hollywood it got the point across.

“I’ve got four hostages here, and I only need
one
. If I don’t have an answer in five seconds, we start making staff cuts.”

“There are overrides for evacuation,” one said, “in case of a fire. We can open up everything from here. The security gates, individual cells, everything.”

“Well then,” I told him, “you’d best get to it.”

He approached the console like a zookeeper walking into a lion’s cage. His fingers trembled as they touched the keys.

“Go on,” I said.

Ten seconds of rattling keys, the flip of a switch, and the wall of monitors flickered to life. All across the prison, locks disengaged and doors glided open as one. I saw tilted heads and curious faces peeping from their cells, and nervous-looking guards walking fast as they chattered into walkie-talkies.

“You’re crazy,” Jablonski breathed. “Do you even know what you just did?”

I gestured to a microphone at the end of the console. “Is that a PA system? Turn it on. I want to make a prison-wide broadcast.”

The guard obliged. I cleared my throat and leaned in over the mic. As I spoke, I heard a popping squeal and my own voice echoing back from loudspeakers outside.

“Good evening, Eisenberg Correctional. This is your new warden speaking. You may have noticed that every single door in the prison has just opened. This is in keeping with our new ‘leave whenever you want’ policy. We fully encourage you to explore this exciting new option! Also, for your information, the guards have been complicit in a scheme to orchestrate inmates’ deaths for profit, and you outnumber them by about fifty to one.”

I clicked off the intercom and looked at Jablonski.

“No,
that’s
crazy.”

“Wait,” one of the guards said, looking from me to Jablonski. “
Deaths?
What the hell?”

“No time to explain.” I grabbed Jablonski’s collar and dragged him backward. “But I suggest you gentlemen barricade yourselves in here. And don’t open the door for
anybody
until the highway patrol moves in.”

Caitlin took one of the purloined guns and aimed at the console. Bullets blasted metal and chewed wiring, round after round until she’d emptied the clip. Now they wouldn’t be locking the place back up once we left. She gave the pistol a disdainful glance and tossed it to the floor.

“C’mon,” Jablonski said, “let me stay in here with them. I did what you wanted!”

“Not done with you just yet,” I told him. “Besides, that wrist looks pretty bad, and you’re awfully pale. If I left you in here, you’d probably die from blood loss before help came. What kind of a guy would I be if I let that happen?
Move
.”

As we approached the doors to Hive C, walking past access gate after open, abandoned access gate, I heard the muffled sounds of war whoops and gunfire. Freed from their cages, the locals seemed more interested in tearing the prison down and settling old scores than trying to escape.

The unlocked double doors opened onto pandemonium. Corpses littered the floor, some guards but mostly prisoners, the first casualties of the riot. The gallery floor was a free-for-all, shiv-swinging inmates tearing at each other in a brutal melee while others tried to hammer down the watchtower doors. The guards in the tower treated the hive like a shooting gallery, crowded up in their perch and raining down fire as fast as they could reload. The air stank of fresh blood and gun smoke.

We kept to the sidelines, moving low and fast, trying to stay out of the snipers’ sight. I hoped they might hold back if they saw Jablonski, but I didn’t want to test that theory. As we hustled for the stairs, a skinhead launched from an open cell door and threw himself onto Caitlin.

She didn’t give him time to regret it. Looking vaguely annoyed, like she’d just found a mosquito on her arm, she shot out her hand. Her index and middle finger punched into his eye sockets, two knuckles deep. She flung him to the concrete, striding past his shrieking, thrashing body without a second glance and flicking blood from her fingertips.

Jablonski stared back over his shoulder as I nudged him along. His eyes bulged.

“How the hell…who
are
you people?”

“She’s the right hand of a demon prince,” I told him, “and I’m her boyfriend. Probably should have found that out before you blasted me with a fire hose, huh?”

“He did
what?
” Caitlin said.

“Aw, it’s okay.” I gave Jablonski a shove, getting him moving up the corrugated metal stairs. “I can let bygones be bygones. Besides, I promised I wouldn’t kill him if he did what I told him to.”

We found Brisco a couple of tiers up, surrounded by his boys and with his T-shirt and uniform slacks drenched in blood. Most of it, except for a nasty-looking gash across one beefy bicep, wasn’t his. Judging from the trail of bodies he’d left in his wake, most of them tattooed with Calles ink, the guards had gotten that race war they wanted after all.

“Nutty thought,” I said, “but maybe you should think about getting out of here while you can.”

He shrugged. “Where am I gonna go?”

“Fair enough. You didn’t happen to see Raymundo, did you? I need a word with him.”

“Nah,” Brisco glanced over his shoulder. “He’s still in the hole. At least until me and the boys pay him a little visit.”

“Me first. You got my camera?”

He slapped it into my palm. A little worse for wear, a little sticky, but the memory card was intact.

“What about him?” one of Brisco’s entourage asked, glaring at Jablonski. They
all
were, actually. He wasn’t a popular man.

I pretended to think about it.

“Well, here’s the thing. I promised I wouldn’t kill him if he did everything I told him to, and he did.” I patted Jablonski on the back. “So I guess here’s where we part ways. Nice seeing ya, buddy.”

“Wait,” Jablonski said, his head on a swivel as he backed up against the guardrail. “You can’t leave me here!”

“Sure I can. Look, all you have to do is make it from here to the exit by yourself. It’s not like you went out of your way to give every man in here a reason to hate you, right? What do you think, Brisco? What are his odds?”

Brisco slapped his fist into his open palm.

“Not good.”

Jablonski tried to run. He made it two, maybe three steps before they fell on him. Then it was all fists and feet and strangled pleading, and we left Brisco and his boys to their revenge.

As we hustled down the stairs, Caitlin took her phone from her coat pocket.

“Yes,” she said, then fell silent for a moment. “
I’m
breaking Daniel out of prison, Emma. What are
you
doing? And I’m hoping the answer is ‘the quarterly financial reports’ because they were due last Thursday.”

She looked sidelong at me as we ran, listening to the quick, almost frantic chatter on the other end of the line, and mouthed “
unbelievable
.”

“Oh.
Oh
. Well, that is useful information. Thank you, dear. Yes, yes, you’re terribly thoughtful and I couldn’t have a better best friend. Yes, we’ll have to do a—”

A con with a bloody spike in his grip charged at us, shrieking like a madman. Caitlin’s free hand clamped down over his face. She wrenched his head sideways, his neck breaking with a sharp
snap
, and let his corpse drop to the concrete.

“—a girls’ night out when I get back,” she said. “But right now I really need to focus on the task at hand. I’ll call you.”

“Problem?” I asked as she slipped the phone back into her coat.

“You could say that. Apparently somebody had a bit more political pull than we anticipated. They’re not sending the highway patrol.” She kicked open a swinging door, leading us out of the hive, away from the chaos. “The governor has just deployed the national guard.”

“Tell me you’re kidding.”

“Emma’s watching the live news coverage,” she said, “which spread impossibly fast. They’re selling this riot as an organized terrorist attack, carried out by prisoners with extremist Muslim sympathies. Allegedly the guards have been rounded up and their captors—who have a bomb—have been calling all the cable networks to issue demands.”

I shook my head. “That’s insane. There’s nothing remotely like that going on here. Who’s making the phone calls?”

“Well-paid actors, I’d imagine. We’re witnessing a contingency plan in action, Daniel. This isn’t Rehabilitation Dynamics protecting their investment; this is Warden Lancaster, or one of his celebrity guests, covering their tracks. I guarantee that ‘bomb’ is going to go off in Hive B, just as the military prepares to roll in.”

“Wiping out the evidence,” I said. “Since we opened all the doors, I can’t imagine any of the prisoners in there are still hanging around, but nobody will believe them. It’ll be their word against Lancaster and his staff.”

“We need to leave. Now. No telling how much time we have before the Guard arrives.”

We paused at a junction in the corridor. The alarm screamed over a loudspeaker, reverberating with my throbbing head.

“We can’t,” I said, “not yet. Jennifer’s in trouble out there, and Raymundo’s the best lead we have. We
have
to get the truth out of him.”

Caitlin wrinkled her nose, but she didn’t argue. The Ad Seg wing wasn’t far, just down a short flight of concrete steps painted with a long yellow line. The air in solitary was dank and cold, smelling like old mothballs. A duty log at an abandoned guard station told us which faceless cell was Raymundo’s, and they’d been kind enough to leave their keys behind.

The door rattled, swinging open onto darkness. Raymundo had been getting the same treatment I had: he huddled, naked and shivering, in a puddle of frigid water.

“I don’t have a lot of time,” I told him, “and I’m a lot more interested in saving my own neck than getting payback, so I’ll make this real easy. Tell us where Jennifer is, and we’ll leave you alone. Hell, I’ll even leave the door open behind me and give you a shot at escaping.
Talk
.”

He spat something in Spanish, and it didn’t sound like the information I wanted.

“Time is real short here,” I said, “and soon I’m gonna have to stop asking nice. Look, just cooperate and we can both win today.”

“JJ’s probably dead by now,” he said, leering in the dark. “Yeah, that
puta
is dead and buried in a shallow ditch—”

Caitlin brushed past me without a word. She grabbed Raymundo by the throat and slammed him up against the wall.

“I’m going to torture you now,” she said and snapped his index finger.

She didn’t ask questions. She just pinned him in place and kept breaking bones, one joint at a time, his finger crackling like a broken wineglass under his shrill screams. Then she stopped.

“You have ten seconds,” she said, “before the pain resumes. This is your window of opportunity to speak. Once the pain resumes, however, it will not stop until another finger is crushed. You will then be allowed another ten seconds’ grace to reconsider before I move on to the third finger. We will continue in this fashion until you have told us where our friend is, or your hand is irreversibly mutilated. Daniel?”

I blinked.

“My phone,” she said with a nod, “is vibrating. Answer that, would you?”

I reached into her pocket and took the phone. I decided to answer it outside. As I crossed the threshold, stepping out into the light, I heard Caitlin say, “Ten.”

Then the screaming started. I cupped my hand over the phone.

“Caitlin’s a little busy right now.”

“Daniel!” Bentley said. “Oh, thank heavens you’re all right. The riot is all over the news—”

“Yeah, don’t worry, there’s no terrorists and no bomb. That whole story’s bogus.”

“The National Guard response, however, is not. Cormie and I are on our way. We, er, ‘acquired’ a local news van. We’re about ten minutes away, and the first Guard trucks are
five
minutes behind us. I have no idea how they mobilized so quickly. I-80’s already been shut down in both directions, and there’s no way out of Aberdeen without a full-vehicle search.”

Behind me, the screaming devolved into broken sobs.

“We’ll be ready for you,” I said.

“Oh good. Do be prompt, please. We’re trying to get you out of prison, not all land
inside
one.”

I hung up, went back into the cell, and gave Caitlin her phone back. She stood over Raymundo, arms folded and looking pleased with herself. He huddled in the corner and let out a ragged whimper, his tear-streaked face turned away from the light coming in through the open doorway.

“I got creative while you were out,” Caitlin said. “Fingers just weren’t getting the message across.”

“Please,” Raymundo sobbed, “just keep her away from me. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

“That was fast,” I said.

Caitlin shrugged. “I can be
very
creative.”