The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust Book 5)

by Craig Schaefer

  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.

  29.

  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.”

  30.

  At that moment, I didn’t care. I didn’t care about Hive B or what horrors might be waiting behind those sealed doors. Anywhere was better than here. I swallowed hard. My mouth was dry, and a fresh wave of nausea washed over me.

  “All right,” I told Emerson. “What’s the plan?”

  “When they take you out of solitary, I’ll give you a new uniform. Inside the pocket, you’ll find a miniature video camera. Whatever’s going on in there, I want footage. As much evidence as you can document.”

  “From what I hear, a trip to Hive B is a one-way ticket. How am I supposed to deliver the goods?”

  Emerson passed a sheet of paper through the slot. I held it up to the thin band of light and squinted. It was a partial map of the prison, photocopied from the original blueprints.

  “Right there.” Emerson’s finger wagged through the slot. “See the circled spot, in yellow highlighter? That’s an access passage adjacent to Hive B. You’ll need to get there, somehow. Given how far your last escape attempt got, I’m figuring you’re clever enough to handle it.”

  “Speaking of,” I said, letting the question hang in the air.

  “Your buddies in the dune buggies? Vanished without a trace. If they didn’t get themselves killed off-roading in the desert, they’re probably halfway to the border by now.”

  I closed my eyes for a second, breath gusting out in a sigh. At least I’d done something right.

  “So I get to the passage,” I said, “then what?”

  “There’s a floor panel providing access to the maintenance tunnels. Normally it’s locked down tight. I’ll make sure it won’t be. Follow the passage, and about fifty yards in I’ll leave a cell phone with my number on it. Call me and I’ll slip you out.”

  “You’re gonna help me break out of prison?”

  “Not exactly,” Emerson said. “I’m going to take you straight to the DOC, where you’ll present your footage and eyewitness testimony.”

  “And what do I get out of the deal?”

  “I can’t get time taken off your sentence, but I can have you transferred to the facility of your choice. You can do your time in a minimum-security country club.”

  “One of those places for white-collar criminals, where they’ve got tennis courts and cable TV?” I asked. “And you’re pretty much on the honor system not to run away?”

  “Exactly.”

  I liked the sound of that. I’d have to come up with a brand-new escape plan, but this time it’d stick.

  “So you’ll slip the camera in with my clothes,” I mused. “Can you smuggle me anything else?”

  “You’ll go through a metal detector on your way in, so no weapons. Don’t worry, the camera’s smaller than your palm and it’s ninety-nine percent plastic. I’ve already walked it through a few of the detectors myself, just to make sure it won’t set any alarms off.”

  I thought fast. Time was running out, and I’d only have one shot to bring in something I could use.

  “I’m going to give you a phone number,” I told him, “for a man named Bentley. Call him and tell him everything.”

  “This is a confidential operati—”

  “Tell him everything, or no deal.” I recited Bentley’s number, waiting for Emerson to scribble it down. “And tell him I need some alchemist’s clay, pronto. He’ll give you a location to meet up with him.”

  “Alchemist’s…clay? What is that?”

  “It’s a special kind of clay,” I said.

  “And it won’t set off the metal detectors?”

  I stared at him through the slot.

  “No,” I said. “Because it’s clay.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” His eyes darted left. “Shit, incoming. I have to go. We have a deal?”

  I didn’t have much of a choice. At least with Emerson’s help I had something I didn’t have ten minutes ago: a fighting chance.

  “Deal,” I said and passed the photocopy back to him. I’d etched it all down on my mental map.

  Then he ratcheted the slot door shut and left me in the darkness.

  I didn’t sink into a stupor this time. The wet and the cold just woke me up. I welcomed the pain and the bruises. And when Jablonski returned a few hours later, giggling as he unleashed the hose and plunged me into another freezing hell, I silently thanked him. He’d given me a gift. The gift of hatred.

  Because whatever was waiting for me in Hive B, now I had to survive long enough to see Jablonski dead.

  * * *

  When they came for me, I was ready.

  The door swung open, flooding the tiny cell with piercing light. I squinted, eyes tearing up. Three guards stood outside: two I didn’t recognize, and Emerson, holding a bundle of clothes in his arm. A fresh prison uniform.

  “Get dressed,” the guard on the left barked. “You’re being transferred.”

  Emerson handed me the clothes, carefully passing the bundle so that I could feel something small and hard against my palm. I turned to one side as I pulled on the tan trousers, subtly glancing to make sure I wasn’t showing any suspicious bulges in my pocket. If I got searched now, Emerson and I were both screwed.

  “We’ll take it from here,” the other guard told Emerson once I’d finished buttoning up my shirt. I left it untucked, the tails drooping over my pockets for a little extra camouflage. As I smoothed my shirt my fingers dipped into my right pants pocket, just long enough to brush against a square of smooth plastic and a tiny, grainy lump of clay the size of a gumball.

  Perfect.

  As they shackled my wrists to a padlocked waist-belt, I felt like Houdini getting ready for an escape act. It must have shown on my face. One of the guards gave me the side-eye. “What are you smiling about?”

  “Just happy to be stretching my legs a little.”

  “Don’t get used to it,” he said and gave my shoulder a shove.

  As we marched through the labyrinthine corridors, I watched the walls and made notes. The arrows pointing the way to “Central Security” caught my interest. If I judged right, the name was literal—it was right at the center of the underground passages, between the three hives.

  When we came to the spot marked on Emerson’s blueprint, I recognized it at once. A short stretch of hallway festooned with exposed piping and water valves rising up from the floor and running along the brick at chest level. My shoes clanged over a corrugated metal hatch, a trapdoor on new-looking hinges. That was my exit, then; wherever they took me, whatever happened next, all I needed to do was escape to this spot and slip through the trapdoor without anyone spotting me.

  Easy enough. I hoped. />
  It didn’t take long for my hopes to hit the rocks, as the guards led me past a metal detector, another gate checkpoint, and into Hive B.

  Instead of the raucous noise and milling bodies of the other hive, I was greeted by an empty gallery floor leading up to a central guard tower. Instead of tier after tier of bars, I looked up at stark iron doors. Hundreds of them.

  The entire hive, all seven stories of it, had been converted into cells for solitary detention.

  They walked me up to the fourth tier. We passed cell after cell where a narrow slot stood open, the occupants’ only window to the outside world. In some cells, cowering figures huddled in corners, hiding their faces from the light. In others, eyes stared back out at me. Hard eyes. Distant eyes. Mad eyes. I stopped looking.

  My new cell was identical to the one they’d just pulled me out of, with one exception: on the back wall, a frosted panel under a wire-frame cage glowed with soft light. There wasn’t anything to look at, but at least I wouldn’t go blind in the meantime.

  They took off my shackles and waved me inside. As soon as the door swung shut, clanging behind me and sealing me in, I fought a surge of claustrophobic terror. Was this the great mystery of Hive B? That they were keeping everyone in permanent solitary?

  It made a sick kind of sense. Eisenberg Correctional only cared about minimizing expenses and maximizing profits; rehabilitation wasn’t on the menu. Providing recreation cost money, and so did hiring enough guards to watch all the prisoners. Medical care and patching up cons after the occasional brawl cost money too. So much easier to toss every prisoner into his own personal tomb and let him rot.

  All the convicts I’d been told about, the ones who had been snatched in the night and transferred to Hive B, had violent records—or in Simms’s case, attacked other inmates. Exactly the kind of prisoners who gave the administration a headache. And then there were the ones who wouldn’t ever be getting out and squawking about this to the press: the ones on life sentences, with no parole.