Black nodded.
Frank pointed him to an area off to the left.
A cluster of machines stood on the floor. They looked almost like large vacuum cleaners... or maybe rideable lawnmowers. Black spotted Cowboy working towards the back and started to walk that way, then realized Frank and Easton were staying behind. He paused to look at them, lifting an eyebrow in an unspoken question.
“We have to go to the laundry,” Frank explained.
Black nodded. He knew the other big work area apart from road and agricultural crews was the industrial laundry downstairs, which supplied clean sheets and linens for most of the chain hotels in the state. Smaller work areas inside the prison included the kitchen, a prison garden just inside the second wall, and a sewing shop that did mostly uniforms, including for some fast food chains in addition to those of the prison guards.
It was from Frank that Black finally found out for certain where he was.
He was currently doing time in the fine state of Louisiana.
He still didn’t know what part of the state, but at least now he had better than a ballpark guess in terms of the part of the country. The guards talked about Lake Charles often enough that he figured out: 1) they weren’t talking about a body of water, but a city, and 2) it had to be the biggest town in the vicinity, since they seemed to do most of their socializing there.
Black didn’t know Louisiana at all, though, so had no idea where Lake Charles was. The only parts of Louisiana he’d ever visited prior to this were Shreveport and New Orleans.
Tipping a short salute in thanks to Frank, he turned on his heel and walked.
He found Cowboy sitting on a stool next to one of the lawnmower-like machines. A lit cigarette hung off the corner of his lips. He squinted down at the inside of the thing’s engine, smoke in his eyes, his rough-cut hair sweated to his head.
“Why’s it so fucking hot in here?” Black asked.
Cowboy tensed, glancing up. He took Black in with a look, then focused back on the engine. “Can’t have us too comfortable.” He smiled faintly, using a screwdriver to open a panel. “You’re a stealthy fucker for such a big guy.”
Black grunted. “Can’t be too comfortable? While you work for free, you mean?”
Cowboy took the cigarette out of his mouth, giving him a faint grin. “Some of us like machines, brother. It ain’t Christian to let us have too much fun.”
“What is that fucking thing, anyway?”
“Floor polisher,” Cowboy said at once. Standing up, he wiped the grease off his hands with a rag, nodding towards another row of inmates working on larger machines. “Or you can refurbish golf carts, if you prefer.”
“Floor polishers and golf carts.” Black grunted. “Figures.”
“Come on. I imagine you came here for something else.” Balancing the cigarette back between his lips, he motioned with his head for Black to follow him. “I got a chance to play with a few things before you got here. I’m feeling optimistic.”
“Optimistic?” Black felt another shiver of pain go through him, but kept it off his face. “Well, that sounds exciting.”
“I think so.”
Black glanced back at the door, but the guard wasn’t watching them now. He followed Cowboy as he walked deeper into the warehouse-sized room. They weaved through a few more convicts on stools working on floor polishers and golf carts, then entered a narrow, multi-station workbench set at standing height on both sides.
Cowboy walked through the aisle casually, ashing his cigarette on the floor here and there.
“I’ve got five minutes,” Black told him.
Cowboy didn’t look back. “I figured as much. Enough time to get some ideas at least.” He glanced over his shoulder. “We may have to do the rest tomorrow.”
“I’m willing to make a special effort,” Black said.
“So the five is just a guideline then?” Cowboy said, taking another drag of his smoke.
“You get this thing off me, and it’ll be a fucking memory.”
Cowboy grunted a laugh. “I admit, you’ve got me mighty curious, friend.” He glanced back at him again, smiling sideways with the cigarette hanging off his lip. “You turn into a big green monster man without that thing on, or something?”
“Or something,” Black said, giving him a small smile back.
Cowboy shook his head, but the smile stayed on his dirt and grease-smudged face. They reached the warehouse wall and he motioned Black nearer, pointing at a set of larger tools sitting on a solid metal table.
“They’ve got the big cutters chained to the wall,” he explained, flicking a few fingers towards the bolts. “Most of ‘em are for sheet metal. They’ve got alarms on ‘em, if you try to detach ‘em from the wall.” He tugged on one of the chains to make the point, then glanced up at Black’s collar. “That won’t be an issue for us, though.”
“Nope,” Black said.
“Thought we could start here,” Cowboy said, dropping the cigarette and crushing the cherry with his heel. “If this doesn’t work, I’ve got a few more ideas...”
Black was about to answer, when a shout rose up by the door.
Both of them turned.
Then the alarm went off.
“Fuck,” Black muttered.
He could see the guards heading towards them already.
All over the warehouse floor, convicts were going down on their stomachs, hands behind their heads, like they were supposed to do during an alarm. Black glanced at Cowboy, who frowned. Neither of them moved.
“Get down!” A guard yelled, jogging towards them, a long flashlight in his hand. “Both of you! On the ground! Right now! Right the fuck now!”
Holding their hands up, both of them got slowly down on the floor. Black laid on his stomach, placing his palms on the floor in front of him, even as the guards swarmed down the aisle between the work benches, surrounding him.
He saw them ignoring Cowboy and his stomach sank.
“You’re not authorized to be down here,” a guard said, over him. The same guy sank his knee into Black’s wounded shoulder, making him grimace as another guard wrenched his hands behind his back, cuffing his wrists.
“I was passing a message,” Black managed through the pressure on his chest and lungs. “From Dixon. I had a five minute pass...” He craned his head, looking up and grimacing when they tightened the cuffs. “It’s in my pants, goddamn it! Check it!”
The guard didn’t look the slightest bit interested. Gripping Black’s hurt shoulder in his hands, he lifted his weight once the cuffs were fastened. He and two other guards hauled Black to his feet, leaving Cowboy face-down on the floor.
“I’m not interested in what you have in your pants, asshole,” the guard grunted.
“I’m here for Dixon,” Black said, gritting his teeth. “Running a goddamned errand. That’s it! Fucker asked me. That’s the only reason I––”
“––I’m not interested in that, either,” the guard cut in. “Dixon should have checked with me.” He shoved at Black’s arms, already guiding him back through the way he’d come, walking him quickly down the aisle between the standing work stations. “Your ticket’s been punched, fish. The white coats own your ass now. Just got word this morning... guess that little ‘exercise class’ you boys sponsored yesterday in the yard convinced them you must be feeling better.”
Black felt his stomach drop.
Pain rose in him, hard enough and fast enough to ignite the collar, making him grimace when the shock hit his spine. He considered fighting them for real, but given the collar, he didn’t like his chances. Panting, he fought to keep his light from spiraling out of control. Even so, the collar sparked a few times more, hitting him hard enough once that he cried out.
All the while, somehow, his feet never stopped moving.
They dragged him past the floor polishers and the golf carts, then back out through the machine shop door and into the cement corridor.
Remembering what Brick told him about
the lab, what Cowboy said about the men coming back zombies, Black felt a colder terror run through him. He hadn’t felt anything like it since he’d been a kid. For the first time since those years, he had no idea how to think his way out of something. He had no idea what they would do to him in that other place.
He was increasingly convinced some of these things weren’t human.
Whatever they were, they definitely weren’t seer, either.
Which begged the question... what the fuck were they?
At the thought, he wrenched his body backwards, trying to get free of their hands. Two more guards caught ahold of him when he did, and before he knew it, six of them were forcing him face-first into the wall.
Something sharp bit into the skin of his throat and he tensed his mind, thinking he’d ignited the collar again, when he realized someone had stuck a needle in him. He gasped as the drug hit his system at once, making his tongue thicken even as his limbs grew heavier.
He remembered what Brick told him.
He remembered what Brick said he had to do to get out of here.
He remembered what Brick said he’d do to Miri if Black didn’t.
His options had just emptied down to one.
He found himself seeing her, even as he thought it, seeing her face, almost like she was standing right in front of him.
The pain that rose that time was so bad the collar nearly knocked him out cold.
Nineteen
THE WHITE COATS
HE MANAGED TO remain conscious during the drive. He got passed off to different people, non-prison people, who loaded him into an unmarked van. They put a cloth hood over his head, just like Brick said they would. They chained him to a metal bench in the back of the van like Brick said they would too, chaining his ankles to one another and to a metal floor.
He’d known what Brick wanted from him.
He knew why Brick needed a seer to give it to him.
So he spent the entire drive using his seer memory and senses to log every single beat of that drive. He timed every stretch, every turn, every bump in the road, every time they slowed down, every time they stopped, or even changed lanes.
He counted every second, estimating the length of each of his heart beats after the drug slowed his pulse and his breath. Luckily, the fact that they’d drugged him also meant they left him alone, so he had few distractions. Via smell and sight before they hooded him, he knew they had six men moving him. Four of those sat in the back with him, and two carried shotguns. They talked amongst themselves, about sports mostly, but also about some crime incident in downtown Lake George that got two local police officers shot.
Then that changed.
The van stopped.
Still hooded, Black was uncuffed from the seat and from the floor. The four security guys led him into a new van, one that smelled like detergent inside, making his nose itch. Four people who smelled totally different than the first four loaded in the back with him, and the new truck started up and off they went.
The new crew didn’t talk at all.
Black wondered at the change in vehicles. Why? Why would they do that?
Even as he turned over possible reasons why they might feel the need to confuse anyone following them, Black never stopped logging the details of the drive, including any scent he caught and every sound he heard, from the distant whistle of a train to the sound the tires made on different parts of the road.
He got moved in and out of different vans with different crews four more times.
Each time, it was with a new crew of guards, different ages and sizes. In the last two crews, they were armed with automatic rifles and wearing kevlar, which he figured out mostly from smell again, as well as the sounds of their bodies moving.
About halfway through that trip, they also hit him with another syringe.
Black smelled a lot of water a few times, fresh water the first time, but as they got closer to their destination, and went through yet another vehicle change, he found himself smelling salt water every time the wind blew from in front of them.
So they were driving south, roughly, at least.
He must be smelling the Gulf of Mexico.
When the van finally stopped at its final destination, Black was fighting to remain conscious for real.
The back doors opened to his left and he jumped, realizing he’d been on the verge of dozing off. Hands gripped his feet which he realized only then were bare. They un-cuffed his ankles and then his wrists from the bench and the truck’s floor, leaving them shackled to one another. Two more sets of hands grabbed ahold of him on either side and half-carried him out of the back of the van, still leaving him hooded.
He fought to keep up with their steps, but the drug and the loss of adrenaline were starting to win. He bit his tongue, fighting to keep his mind alert as he logged as much of his surroundings as he could as they brought him through a hollow-sounding space. The echo of footsteps told him it was a high ceiling––a warehouse or maybe a large loading dock. He heard people working in there, but few and far between. The space was cloyingly hot and humid, and it smelled like oil and salt water, brine and sweat.
He heard seagulls––a lot of them––presumably through the open doors through which the van came. The sound was loud enough and consistent enough that he found himself thinking they were right by the water.
Then he heard the snick of automatic doors in front of him, and a rush of cool air met him.
Air conditioning.
He could hear people all around him then, walking past, talking to one another.
He tried to catch snippets of conversation through his groggy mind, but most of it was disjointed, meaningless, or went by too fast for him to get much. He did hear talk of rooms and needing this person or that person, and one person seemed to be discussing medication doses.
His mind flashed to Emergency Rooms in hospitals, or maybe the waiting area of a busy medical clinic. He knew his mind might be filling in gaps, given that they’d called this a lab, but the new room smelled like a hospital, too. The cleaning detergents and pungent bite of alcohol barely masked darker odors like blood and bile and sweat and fear.
It was carpeted, and he could hear computers, phones... machines that beeped.
Then someone, a woman with a crisp, professional-sounding voice, walked directly up to them and spoke to one of the guards.
“Are you from Crenshaw?”
“Yes,” the man to his right said. “You’re expecting us, right?”
“I am. Is this the new one? Number 3297T2?”
“This is him. First intake. We’ve got all the papers here.” The man paused, his voice suddenly doubtful. “Is it just you? Usually we hand them off to your security team.”
She sighed, sounding harried and overworked. “It’s just me today, I’m afraid. I’m going to need you to bring him down for me. Our security team was busy with...” She hesitated, as if remembering where she was. “...with something else. Will that be a problem?”
“No, not at all, ma’am. We’ve got security clearance for the labs.”
“Fine. Follow me, please.”
Those hands began pulling Black along through what had to be the lobby of the building.
Still fighting grogginess, he struggled to track everything around him as they walked. He heard a lot of people pass them in the larger front room and then fewer when they entered an adjacent corridor. Almost a dozen more walked past him by the time they reached the first turn. No way to know anything about security, but obviously a lot of people walked around freely in here, so security was relatively lax, at least at the front end of the facility.
Maybe that’s why they kept him hooded in here, and drugged. Maybe it was less about the ride in the back of a series of windowless vans and more about not being able to recognize any part of the facility until he got to the secure area.
After walking down a few different corridors, it got a lot quieter.
Then, all at once, they stopped. Doors
pinged and opened in front of him, and Black realized he was standing outside of an elevator.
They brought him inside, and for a moment, the doors remained open as a series of smaller beeps happened by what must be the elevator panel to the right of the doors.
There must be some kind of security measure on the elevator itself. Pass card maybe. Maybe even a bio-scan. Either way, after a short delay, the doors closed and his stomach dropped.
It seemed to go down a long ways.
When the elevator car finally stopped and the doors pinged again, Black had no idea how many floors they’d passed. The best he could do was estimate how long it had taken them to get from the upper floor to this one.
Whatever stood on the other side of those doors was quiet.
The woman’s high-heeled shoes clicked hollowly on the floor as she walked in front of them. Again, they stopped a few times and he heard several series of beeps that told him they had more security down here. After the fourth of these, the door opened to the sound of other people, as well as warmer air that smelled of human beings.
He knew they must have recycled air down here, too, so he couldn’t guesstimate their number, but he heard at least three greet the woman as they passed.
They called her “Dr. Nguyen.”
They walked through a few more whooshing glass doors, then Black found himself in a smaller room, which he determined from the air flow as well as the acoustics. They guided him over to a padded table, pushing him to sit on it, then to lie down. He felt his muscles tense all over as they un-cuffed one of his wrists, cuffing it to something metal over his head while they cuffed his other wrist to the table.
He clenched every muscle he had when they then cuffed his other wrist to the opposite side. They fastened a chain to the collar on his neck then, doing it on both sides so that he couldn’t raise his head.
Then they repeated the process with his ankles.
“This one is compliant,” Dr. Nguyen remarked. “He’s not struggling at all.”
The guard finishing up with his right ankle let out a humorous sound. “I think it’s probably the drugs, doc. We gave him a bit extra, because of the size of him. He was a fighter in the yard, so don’t take any chances with him.”
Black And Blue (Quentin Black Mystery #5) Page 24