by R. B. Schow
The man serving him “lunch” frowned then filled his bowl with hot slop. Shit on a single was some sort of mystery-meat patty covered in watered-down gravy. Looking down with a frown, he realized that this was something else entirely. Today was some sort of stew concoction.
“The semen count is high on this one,” the cook mumbled as Atlas moved on.
Looking over his shoulder in disgust, Atlas found the man shaking in a fit of muted laughter. Charles was laughing, too. This caused Atlas to laugh for the first time in months. What the hell…was he actually making friends?
Not likely.
Sitting alone at his own table, he pushed his plastic spoon through the stew, unable to stop the look of revulsion on his face. What he was being forced to eat looked like bite-sized dog meat dipped in cream of mushroom soup with a sprinkling of turmeric and pepper. If meal-planning for the prison system was a state-mandated thing, these motherfuckers were failing miserably. He ate it anyway because he needed the protein and the carbs. If he wanted to survive, he needed to remain quick on his feet and ferocious. If not now, how else would he dissuade the shot callers from messing with him?
He was just about to the bottom of the bowl when some jackass bumped into his back. The inmate sunk his elbow into Atlas’s spine like he was itching to start something. Atlas turned ever so slightly, watching the offending inmate out of the corner of his eye. A few of the stooges at a nearby table snickered, but the rest of the guys—those who saw this as potential entertainment—got extra quiet.
Keeping his head low, largely ignoring them, Atlas snuck an upward glance at the guards on the second floor. They were armed with tasers and shotguns, and judging from past experience, the shotguns were loaded with bean bag rounds. If any of them had seen what had just happened, it wasn’t registering on their faces.
Hunched over but acutely aware of everything, Atlas forced himself to eat the rest of his meal. For as calm as he tried to look, his senses had gone to high alert.
The nature of the talk around him changed, the white noise of the others amplifying. That’s when he heard the fish that bumped him say, “You said I was poking a rattlesnake, but he didn’t even move. What a coward.”
Filtering out all the other noise, Atlas twisted his head sideways and zeroed in on the new guy, some oversized scrub that easily had six inches and fifteen pounds on him.
One of the lifers told the fish, “Your mistake was thinking you’d piss off a rattlesnake. Hargrove is the bear that you just didn’t poke hard enough.”
Atlas felt dozens of eyes fall on him. So it was going to be like this…
Deep inside his chest, he felt the blood pumping a bit harder, fresh stores of adrenaline flooding into his bloodstream. He flexed his pecs, squeezed his biceps, set his jaw. This was not the day to test him, not after he had just done thirty days in the hole. Then again, maybe that’s why this fish felt so brave. Everyone assumed Atlas would take it because he wouldn’t want to go back to solitary. They assumed right. The other possibility was that they were trying to get his ass on the ghost train. Normally he wouldn’t mind a good fight, but Atlas didn’t want to be shuffled around to other facilities, not when Leopold worked so hard to turn the screws on this warden in this prison.
The stupid mutt next to the offending brute glanced at Atlas and then said, “You smoke that dirty pig and you become a legend. Mufukkas here be holding your pockets, not the other way around.”
The big mistake this FNG was about to make was thinking he was dealing with the Atlas Hargrove that first arrived in NorCal State Prison. That particular Atlas was wet behind the ears, asshole freshly probed, dressed in a fresh pair of blues not knowing shit about shit. That guy was soft, scared—a real mess. That guy was dead and gone. Now, five months after Ukraine, with three trips to the hole and multiple prison murders under his belt, he was walking rage, the epitome of a problem child. He wanted that part of him well known. That’s why—until Leopold got him the hell out of there again—he refused to shave his beard, cut his hair, or stop training the several hours a day he did train for whatever fight was coming next.
But the problem with running so hot all the time was that if Leo didn’t summon him soon, if the ultra-rich vigilante financier didn’t give Atlas a proper outlet for all this pent-up agitation, he was going to blow. Unbeknownst to everyone, Atlas’s dreams of dying young hadn’t been squelched in the courtroom. The real death sentence was him dying of natural causes fifty years later after having spent an eternity putting up with these knuckleheads in this god-awful place.
Turning his head, he eyeballed the moron who had nudged him. He was getting ready to take this joker to the floor when an audible ruckus caused him to glance around.
“Fresh meat!” someone called out.
“Fish gets fried!” someone else shouted, prompting the remaining inmates to chime in. The chanting grew louder and louder, the inmates’ voices more fanatical. Pretty soon everyone was stomping their feet and banging their fists on the tables, the uproar so loud, Atlas couldn’t even hear himself think. That’s when he saw the FNG.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.
The instant Baxter “Butane” Kirtman was escorted into the proximity of others, the renowned serial killer let loose a shit-eating grin that Atlas hated with a passion. There was a certain kind of ugliness about him you could feel from a mile away. It oozed off him like a sickness, the look of it like toxic waste being rubbed into your eyes.
When Baxter disappeared on his way to his new cell, the noise died down and one of the guards eased up to him. “Don’t get any ideas, child-killer.”
“Like what?” Atlas asked, looking up.
The guard snickered and walked off leaving him to wonder what the heck he was even talking about. The minute the guard left, the fish that had bumped into him earlier was back for more. He knocked Atlas a lot harder this time.
“Get up, pig,” the brute said.
Atlas sat up and stared straight ahead. He rolled his neck, popped his knuckles then looked down at his bowl like he’d missed something. He ran a finger over the surface of the bowl, picking up whatever gravy was left over then he licked his finger and relaxed. Even though he moved like he didn’t have a care in the world, Atlas was more than ready to go.
“That’s what I thought,” the big guy said, walking off.
Atlas had had enough. He stood up fast and charged the man. He fired a shot into his kidney, then grabbed his head and bounced it off the table twice. The inmate slumped to the floor, but Atlas gave him no room to breathe. He drove six or seven massive shots to the scumbag’s temple, knocking him out cold.
Two guys stood in their seats after Atlas had disturbed their lunch. He didn’t wait for them to attack before putting both of them down, too. The minute he cracked the second man’s jaw, one of the guards racked his shotgun and fired. The beanbag-round struck Atlas in his shoulder kicking him forward into the table. The pain was instantaneous. This would have stopped anyone in their right mind, but Atlas ran hot on a calm day and he was not in his right mind. At that moment, he was redlining.
Spinning around, he looked up and saw the guard re-racking his shotgun. One of the other douchebags from the table was suddenly in his ear with curse words, threats, insults. He drove an elbow into the man’s face, catching him in the chin. He dropped the same as the others, prompting the guard to take aim once more.
In one fluid movement of anticipation, Atlas spun his body sideways and swatted the air in front of his chest the way you would if you were trying to check a punch. His palm struck the projectile just enough to divert it from its original trajectory, causing the bean bag to skip off his hand rather than striking him dead on. It was a one-in-a-million block, something he would never replicate again, but at that moment, it was everything.
His hand hurt like hell, but he just looked up at the guard like it was nothing, like he could eat another round if that was the meal being served up. If the guard was stunned, he didn�
�t show it. But the chow hall…oh yeah, the chow hall got really quiet. He’d just blocked a bean bag round with his bare hand and now he was mad-dogging the guard with cold, defiant eyes.
The guard’s shotgun was trained on his chest for a long time. The moment felt eternal, but Atlas was steadfast in his resolve. He wasn’t backing down. Finally, the guard eased up, bringing Atlas a moment of relief.
He took his eyes off of the guard then took the fish’s bowl of slop and returned to his table. As he ate another helping of liquid dog shit, he eyed the men he’d just put down. The instigator was still laid out on the ground, his limbs stiff and his eyes only now starting to roll back down to normal.
A guard was now on the floor coming for him.
“Let’s go, slugger,” he said.
After quickly mopping his bowl clean, Atlas was escorted back to his cell with a rough hand by a guy who didn’t like him. That’s when he saw that Baxter Kirtman had moved into his cell.
“What’s that cocksucker doing in my cell?” Atlas asked the guard.
“That’s not just your house, it’s his house too.”
Atlas frowned, slowing his step so much that the guard gave him a light shove to keep him moving. Now he knew why the guard who told him “not to think about it,” said what he said. He knew Baxter Kirtman was going to be Atlas’s new celly.
“You Muppets just don’t know when you’re doing a bad thing, do you?” Atlas asked.
The guard didn’t answer. Had they all known BBK was going to be Atlas’s new celly or was it just a few of the guards?
“Either way,” the guard said, “this should be entertaining.”
Atlas could actually feel the guard grinning in anticipation. What made the situation worse, however, was that when he arrived at his cell, Baxter had taken all of Atlas’s stuff off the top bunk and moved it to the bottom bunk. An infraction like that was unforgivable.
Atlas walked into his cell and looked up at the serial killer. The cage door shut firmly behind him but he paid it no mind. Just when the little freak started to speak, Atlas grabbed him by the trousers and yanked him violently off of the bed. His body hit the floor with a loud thud, the impact so hard it left BBK gasping for breath.
The physical outburst hurt his aching hand but he was beyond pain at that point. He needed the time to clear the upper bunk of the serial killer’s things and put his stuff up there.
“You two play nice,” the guard said.
“No,” Atlas retorted.
By the time Baxter K. got to his feet, the guard had moved on and Atlas was ready for round two. He grabbed the smaller man and drove him into the cage door, his big hand wrapped around BBK’s throat. Atlas squeezed hard as he lifted him three inches off the ground. He felt his face shaking with rage. All that adrenalized fuel was five months of agitation and harassment boiling over. It was sadness, disappointment, and anger all wrapped in one. Baxter K. just became his outlet, the place to put all of his hostility, and it was as good a place as any.
“You ever sit your skinny ass on my bed again, if you ever touch my things, I swear to God I’ll pull out your fucking spleen,” Atlas growled through clenched teeth.
On the other side of the bars, a different guard appeared. “I feel like I interrupted you two having a…private moment,” he said, his face filled with delight.
“Piss off, screw,” Atlas growled, never once taking his eyes off of Baxter’s eyes.
“If you kill this one, too, you’ll get two months of darkness,” the guard reminded him. “Is that what you want? That’s like a year in ‘hole hours’. ”
“I’d like to see you try to get me out of here,” Atlas said.
Baxter’s face was turning blue. He clawed at Atlas’s arms, his jerking legs shaking and kicking with no tangible result. As the fight to survive waned, Baxter’s eyes began to slowly roll up into his head.
“We always get you out of there,” the guard said, tilting his head to look at Baxter. “Let the prison at least collect a check on this monkey dick before you eighty-six his ass.”
“No,” Atlas muttered.
“Be smart, boy.”
Atlas finally let the man down, readjusted his grip, then spun and used his weight and momentum to launch him into the concrete wall where their toilet was located. BBK hit the wall hard then collapsed into a heap. Clearly, he was unconscious.
Facing the guard, Atlas said, “There’s another open cell somewhere. Put him there.”
“Just think, if you’re stuck in the hole for two months, this chomo fuckwagon is going to wipe his ass and his filthy pecker all over your bed. Sixty days of his dirtiest parts grinding up against your stuff. When you finally get back here, it’ll be like curling up in his crotch.”
Behind him, he heard Baxter groaning and trying to stand up. “If I go to the hole again,” Atlas said, resolute, “it’ll be because I’ve broken his neck in half.”
“You say that,” the guard grinned, “but it won’t come to that.”
Atlas turned and looked at BBK, studied the man for a moment. “Yeah, I’m going to make that happen.” To BBK, he said, “Sit your ass down!” BBK sat down.
“If it’s any consolation,” the guard said, “I’ve got ten bucks that says he’ll still be alive in thirty days.”
“You shouldn’t have made that bet,” Atlas growled.
“By the way, you have a visitor.”
Atlas felt his heart switch gears then start to gallop.
“What? Who?”
“Oh, and the warden wants to see you afterward.”
“About what?” he asked.
The guard laughed. “He already heard about the stunt you pulled in the chow hall.”
“I was just defending myself,” Atlas said. “Who’s the visitor?”
“I’ll tell you this much, your visitor is a she.”
And with that, Atlas appraised his appearance long enough to regret not cutting his beard, his hair, or even trimming his nails.
“Let’s go, Neanderthal, you look amazing,” the guard chided, “if you’re into wildlife.”
Atlas put his hands out, let the guard cuff him, and then he tried to regulate his breathing without letting his anticipation soar too much.
Who was here to see him? Jade? Cira? What if it’s neither of them? The thought gave him pause. Then it filled him with a cold determination.
If his visitor was neither of the two women, he’d simply turn and walk away. And then maybe he’d kill Baxter K. and head back to the hole where he’d take a two-month victory lap.
Chapter Two
OTIS FYKES
Waking up in hell with a pulse was something you learned to do because, for heaven’s sake, it was summer in El Paso and everything was hot, dry, and dusty.
Otis Fykes rubbed his expanding belly, wondered if it was getting any bigger (of course it was), and thought that if he was able to shit out last night’s nachos and piss out the six beers he put away last night, he might be able to win the day.
Rolling over, passing gas, he checked the side of the bed that had been empty for two years now. He would never fill that side with another body. After his wife left him, after his subsequent weight gain, he was done chasing tail. One day, if he needed it, he’d just pay for it.
He slid his hand over the hump in the middle of the mattress then let it settle into the dip Tanya left behind. He drew his hand back, closed his eyes, tried to remember what she smelled like. The last he remembered, she smelled like lavender. He wanted to lean over, see if there was something of her left there, something other than the shape of her once upon a time, but he couldn’t do it. Keeping to his side of the bed, he tried forcing thoughts of her out of his head.
After today, you’ll be able to afford a new bed, he told himself.
The queen-sized bed wasn’t his bed; it had always been their bed. In two years, he hadn’t once crossed the high point in the mattress to sleep on her side, or even to form a new shape in the middle of the bed. T
oday was no different. Sitting up, he rubbed his face then dug a booger out of the inside of his left nostril.
Looking over at her side of the bed, he frowned. As distant as it was, Tanya’s betrayal cut him to the bone. How was he supposed to let that go? How could he forget or forgive? Even now, gone two years, Tanya still had her side of the bed, and he still had his. Frowning, angry again, he rolled the booger in between his fingers then let it drop on the carpet with the others.
The alarm on his phone sounded, a Bruce Hornsby and The Range tune he had loved so long ago: “The way it is.” The song reminded him of a time when there was still some good left in him. He shut it off then checked the phone for messages. He didn’t see any.
“Get up, loser,” he mumbled.
Forcing himself out of bed, he grabbed the phone then padded across the linoleum floor to a small bathroom that hadn’t seen a clean day since he was in his thirties. He guzzled down a glass of cold water to get the bowels moving but the cold water wasn’t nearly cold enough. While he waited for a call, for his colon to respond, he checked the weather app on his phone. It was going to be another hot, dry day.
“Surprise, surprise,” he said, mimicking Gomer Pyle from The Andy Griffith Show.
Leaning sideways, he both burped and farted, and then he pulled down his boxers, sat on the toilet, and tried to undo the damage he’d done less than twelve hours ago.
When he thought about how much food he’d eaten last night, he tried not to be too hard on himself. After all, there was nothing like a pre-celebration celebration, and what better way to party the night away than with drinks and a victory meal. Today, victory would be his. Granted, it would come at the expense of four innocent people, but that was life. Sometimes you’re the hammer, sometimes you’re the nail. Today, he got to be the hammer.
Thinking about his situation, he heard his old man in his head. He used to say, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”