Wild Blood (8 page)

That evening Skinner had his first meal behind bars. It consisted of tomato soup, refried beans, corn bread and a fried baloney sandwich. He sat opposite Creighton, who devoured his meal with the indifference of a man who had known little else but institutional food.

“Look here, Rope; there's a new fish in the tank.”

Creighton froze, spoon halfway to his mouth, as Mother set his tray down beside Skinner with a loud clatter and a huge black man with a shaved head sat down opposite him. Although the second man did not speak, his eyes were focused on Skinner.

“I saw you trying to hide him from me, out in yard. But I can smell fresh meat a mile away,” Mother grinned, displaying teeth the color of antique ivory. “There ain't a boy that comes into this place I don't know about. Ain't that right, Rope?”

The heavyset man grunted, narrowing his eyes into slits. Skinner had a good view of the scar ringing the man's throat, and how it pulsed and twisted whenever he swallowed.

“You leave him be, Mother,” Creighton said in a low voice.

Mother pulled his lips back into something that might have passed for a smile if you weren't looking into his eyes. “Why's that, Creighton? He your punk?”

The older man shifted uneasily, dropping his eyes. He was no longer in any condition to square off against a hard case as young and mean as Mother, and both men knew it.

“It's just that Skinner here ain't done you no disservice.”

“He ain't provided no service, either,” Mother countered, turning to leer at the topic of conversation. “Ain't that right, fresh meat?”

Skinner's face was dead white except for the hectic blotches of red marking each cheek. He stared down at the battered tin cafeteria tray as if he could see the future in the skin forming atop his soup.

“You deaf, or are you dissing me, boy?” Mother snarled. “You answer when I talk to you.”

Skinner raised his head and glared at the tattooed man, fighting to keep from spitting in his face. Mother was momentarily surprised by the color of the new inmate's eyes, and then broke into a slow, evil smile.

“I'm gonna enjoy doin' you, meat. You need a few lessons on how a punk like you should act towards his betters, and I'm just the man to teach 'em to you.” He motioned to his companion, and the two picked up their trays and moved on to another table.

“What am I gonna do?” Skinner whispered, trying his best to keep the fear from his voice.

“Watch your back.”

“Can't I get the guards to do something? What if I tell them Mother threatened to rape me? Can't they do anything to stop him?”

Creighton shook his head. “If you snitch to the warden, all he'll do is take you out of Gen Pop and put you in Protective Custody for a week or two. Once they let you outta PC and release you back into Gen Pop, you'll be lucky to last a day before someone puts a shiv in you.”

Skinner was still mulling what Creighton told him when the bell rang for lights out. He lay there in the dark for a long time, arms folded behind his head, and stared at the cracks in the ceiling above his bunk. He was surrounded by the sound of a hundred men whispering, snoring, praying and fucking in the dark. It was like he was in a zoo full of animals on the verge of tearing at one another apart.

Skinner wasn't sure when he finally managed to drift off, or if he'd been asleep for minutes or hours. All he knew was that something made him start awake, his muscles rigid and every hair on his body erect. Then he saw Creighton's silhouette looming before him. At first he was afraid the older man was going to try and rape him, but then he looked into his cell-mate's face and realized the prisoner was asleep.

“I—I had a dream … about you.” Creighton's voice was thick and slurred. “You … was wearing … a crown … and a robe … and you was walkin' the yard … I asked someone why … you were tricked out … and they said … you was really a prince … You walked right up to the fence … and you parted it like it was a curtain … and walked on through … You was so beautiful … so wild … so free … freer than air … freer than water … I knew I had to follow you …” Creighton lifted a hand to his seamed face with its busted nose and droopy eyelid and began to cry. “So … free … so … beautiful …” With that he lumbered over to the toilet in the corner of the cell and noisily relieved himself before returning to his bunk. Within seconds he was snoring.

Skinner did not sleep the rest of the night. Instead, he lay in his bunk, trying to deal with the realization that his only ally in the hellhole he now found himself in was not entirely sane.

Chapter Eight

Skinner's second day at Los Lobos began calmly enough. He and the other ninety-nine inmates of Cell Block A were awakened at six in the morning by the simultaneous sounds of the wake-up bell and the mechanism that controlled their cell doors unlocking. He then showered in the company of several dozen men, returned to his cell and put on his clothes before trooping off to the mess hall, where they were served cornbread, sausage patties and powdered eggs.

After breakfast, Skinner reported to the duty officer whose job it was to assess the new inmates' skills and assign them to whichever sector of the prison was short of man power. Skinner was assigned to the grounds detail, where he and six other men were given the hellish task of resurfacing the basketball court.

For the remainder of the day, while under the supervision of an armed guard and those in the air-conditioned towers, he and his fellow inmates spread asphalt with shovels and rakes, coated it with an oily fixative, then pushed manual rollers over it in order to pack it down and smooth out the playing surface. All of this is ninety degree heat, with a half-hour break for lunch and two fifteen-minute water breaks. Skinner had never worked so hard in his entire life.

He returned to his cell, back and shoulders aching, stinking of asphalt, to find Creighton in his bunk, reading a dog-eared porn mag. Unlike Skinner's previous roomie, if Creighton beat off, he kept it to himself.

“Don't you smell like a bed of petunias!” the older man laughed.

“I hurt in places I never knew I had,” Skinner groaned as he crawling onto his bunk with the speed of a three-toed sloth.

“What are you complainin' about? You're a young feller! You'll get used to work details soon enough. But you gotta learn the government lick, or the bulls will work you right into the grave.”

“Sounds obscene, whatever it is.”

“It's simple: all you gotta do is figure out how much work you can get away with not doin'. That way you do what it takes to get by without getting the Man on your ass. Basically, you don't do a lick of work other'n what they tell you to do, how they tell you to do it. Don't go thinkin' for yourself, or tryin' to figure out a more efficient way of gettin' the job done, cause all that does is make 'em find more work for you to do. It's called the government lick on account of that's how civil servants do their jobs.”

“Time to eat!” Creighton announced as the dinner bell rang. He quickly stowed his stroke mag under the mattress of his bunk.” You comin' or what?”

“I need to clean up first. I can't stand to smell myself any longer.”

“Don't take too long, or you'll end up missin' chow. A man can get awful hungry in the middle of the night around here.”

Skinner grunted his understanding as he headed in the direction of the showers, his towel draped over one shoulder. The cell block's shower room was identical to the one in his old high school, with a dozen individual fixtures and a poured concrete floor. Normally prisoners had to wait in line, with ablutions limited to three minutes per man, and those toward the end of the line being forced to settle for luke-warm water, but since he was the only person in the shower room, there would be plenty of hot water for a change.

He was washing the oil and asphalt residue from his hair when he was struck in the chest and knocked back against the tiled wall of the shower. As he opened his eyes to see who'd punched him, the soap from the shampoo poured into them, effectively blinding him.

“Bend over and crack yore Daddy some brown-eye, punk,” Mother snarled, flashing a predator's grin that was all teeth and menace.

“Fuck you!” Skinner snapped, trying to keep the fear from his voice.

“That's exactly what I intend to do,” replied Mother as he drove his fist against the side of Skinner's head.

For a brief second the world was without light, sound or scent, and when Skinner regained his senses, he found himself lying on the floor of the shower, the sound of running water filling his ears.

“Roll him over on his back,” Mother ordered as he opened his pants. “I want him to see me while I'm doin' it.”

Skinner tried to shout for help, but Rope was already on top of him and quickly shoved a pair of bunched-up briefs in his mouth.

Mother gave himself a few swift, angry yanks, as if his dick was made of leather instead of living flesh, until he was pumped full. Skinner could see red and black flames inked along its length, like the customizing on a hotrod engine cowling. “Hold him still, damn it! How do you expect me to plug him if he's wiggling around?” he growled as he spat into his free hand.

Rope punched Skinner hard enough to crack the back of his head against the floor. For a second everything went gray and blurred for a few seconds—until the pain of Mother shoving between his buttocks brought him back to himself. It was like he was being torn in two, the pain increasing with each thrust of his attacker's hips He screamed, but most of it was muffled by the gag blocking his mouth. Tears of agony and shame filled his eyes, streaming from his eyes to his ears.

This isn't happening.

“Look at me!” Suddenly Mother's face was looming over his, breathing hot, putrid air down on him.

Skinner squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head away.

“Look at me when I'm fucking you, punk!”

This isn't happening to me. I'm not really here. When I wake up it'll have been nothing but a bad dream. A nightmare.

Nothing more.

“I said look at me!” Mother's fist smashed into Skinner's nose, breaking it. Blood flooded his sinuses and began backing up into his throat. He tried to spit it out, but the gag was in the way.

I'm going to die. He's going to let me choke to death on my own blood. I'm just meat to them. It doesn't matter if I'm alive or dead. I'm just something to use and throw away. Meat. Meat.

Mother laughed and pointed to Skinner's rapidly inflating penis. “Hey, Rope! He's gettin' off on it! The punk's a faggot! Ain't that right, pretty boy?”

Skinner made a choking noise in the way of a reply. Mother's smile abruptly disappeared, to be replaced by something resembling concern—but not for his victim.

“Hey—something's wrong here.”

Skinner's limbs suddenly began to jerk about so violently Rope could no longer hold him down. Mother began to curse and tried to disengage himself, but was unable to pull free.

“Sweet Jesus, help me!” he exclaimed in a panicky voice. “I'm stuck!”

Skinner wondered what was going on. First there had been unendurable pain, but now he felt like he was a thousand miles away, watching everything from the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. It was what he imagined junkies felt when they shot up. His fear and pain were gone and in their place was something he could only describe as ecstasy. And then the Change was on him.

Mother screamed like a woman as Rope wrapped his forearms under his friend's armpits and yanked him free with a wet popping sound. Mother's face was gray with shock as he clutched the front of his blood-smeared pants, his lips pulled into a rictus grin. The tattooed man said something under his breath—whether a curse or a call to God was moot—as the thing on the shower room floor got to its feet.

It stood on its crooked hind legs and cocked its elongated head to one side. Its fur shone like moonlight on a still lake as it flexed its talons and rolled its stooped shoulders. It shook the beads of water from its silvery coat and licked its wrinkled snout with a long pink tongue. Upon seeing Mother whimpering and shivering like a newly whelped pup, it narrowed its golden eyes and growled.

Rope stepped forward, positioning himself between the beast and his friend. He pulled a sharpened cafeteria spoon with a taped handle from its hiding place inside his shirt and lunged at the creature, burying the shiv in its chest.

The creature howled as bright red blood jetted from the wound and swiped at Rope's head with its claws, slicing open his face. The mute screamed wordlessly as he fell to his knees and frantically tried to put his eye back in its socket.

The thing stepped past him and reached for Mother, propped against the wall, one hand still cupping his crushed genitals. “No,” the big man wept, his tears mingling with the tattooed one at the corner of his eye. “Please …”

The creature grabbed a handful of Mother's hair and pulled him to his feet as if he weighed as much as a kitten. The creature that, moments before, had been Skinner Cade found the smell of his enemy's tears exciting.

“Please don't kill me,” Mother begged.

The thing's teeth snapped shut on Mother's throat. Blood, hot and fresh, spurted into its mouth, and it found it good.

A muscular, denim-clad arm wrapped around the creature's throat, yanking it free of its meal. It was Rope, coming to the aid of his homey, despite the fact one eye was dangling by an optic nerve and the right side of his face had been sliced down to the bone. The mute had the creature in a chokehold and was trying to crush its wind-pipe. And had he been battling a gangly teenager from Seven Devils, Arkansas, he probably would have succeeded.

Instead, the monster grabbed Rope's wrist and easily flipped the mute over its shaggy shoulder, twisting his arm a quarter turn as he struck the floor. There was a loud snapping sound, like that of a green tree branch being broken. Rope opened his ruined mouth and issued a shriek only his killer could hear. The werewolf gave the mute's arm a final wrench, snarling in triumph as the limb came off in its claws.