“Faster,” Caxton breathed. “Faster!”
It did no good. The door was designed to close slowly so that anyone standing in the doorway would have plenty of time to get out of the way.
Outside, the footsteps were coming closer. It was dark out there, but Caxton thought she could see something moving, moving toward her.
“Come on,” she said. “Come on!”
The door was still open by a foot when the first half-dead thudded against it from the far side. They hammered and beat on it, making a rattling, clattering noise. Then one of them had the bright idea to try to slip through the door as it closed. A hand speckled with blood came through the gap, followed by a shoulder wearing the brown patch of a Pennsylvania corrections officer.
The door kept closing. Caxton watched as the half-dead’s arm came farther inside the SHU—and then as the door crushed it. The half-dead squealed in terror and tried to pull its arm back, but the door was still closing.
It clanged shut when it reached the end of its rails. There was no blood, but the half-dead’s severed forearm, still inside the SHU, dropped with a wet sound on the cement floor.
Then it started dragging itself across the floor. Using its fingers as legs, it pulled along the severed stump behind it. It was crawling toward Caxton where she lay on her belly, intent, she was sure, on no good.
“Holy fuck,” Harelip shouted, and came running out of her guard post. “What the hell is that thing?”
“I tried to tell you,” Caxton said, losing some of her patience. She jumped up and ran over to stamp on the crawling hand until she broke the finger bones and stopped it from moving. “This is not just a riot. This is not just an escape attempt. The prison is under attack by unnatural, evil creatures.”
Harelip stared hard at her. Her nostrils were flaring.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “There are no exceptions. During emergencies prisoners must remain in their cells. The warden will send special teams to remove us when it’s safe, and get us to a secure place.”
“Special teams. You mean teams of COs?” Caxton asked.
“Yes, stupid,” Harelip said, scowling.
“You mean—like Murphy? Maybe like the one who gave us this?” she demanded, stamping again on the hand, which was still trying to wriggle around her bare foot. “He was wearing a CO’s uniform, too.”
Harelip might have responded with a curse, or by hitting Caxton with her baton. She didn’t get a chance, however. The buzzer sounded again, and the reinforced door started to slide back open on its rails.
15.
What’s happening?” Caxton asked, as the main door of the SHU inched open. She could hear the half-deads on the other side beating on it and laughing. At any moment it would be wide enough for them to squeeze through. She had no doubt there were a lot of them, and they would all be armed.
Harelip ran back inside the guard post and slammed the red button with her palm again. The door didn’t stop in its tracks. She hit it again, still with no result. Caxton could see her cursing inside the guard post. She came running back out with her baton drawn.
“They’ll have knives,” Caxton said, staring at the CO’s truncheon. “They’ll outnumber us. We have to get the door closed again—what’s going on?”
Harelip scowled. “Every door in the facility can be opened or closed remotely. In case of a riot a unit or dorm can be locked down from central command. Somebody—one of those things—must have gotten to the control board and sent down the emergency evacuation signal. That opens all the doors in this wing.”
“You can’t override the signal from here?” Caxton asked.
“If prisoners took control of the SHU, central would still be able to lock down the unit, or pop it open if they needed to. So no, I can’t override it from here.”
Caxton stared at the slowly opening door as she thought about it. “Before—when the half-dead came in here—they unlocked all the cell doors remotely.”
Harelip nodded. “That’s right. And locked me inside the post. That’s why I couldn’t save the prisoners he killed.”
“But—but you got out, somehow,” Caxton said.
Harelip nodded again. “I yanked the wire that links that door control to central, then I hit my control again and, lucky me, it worked.” She stared at Caxton as if she was just piecing it together. “I could pull the wire for the main door control, too. Cut off the link to central, and then close the door from here.”
“It’s worth trying,” Caxton said, her heart racing.
“It’ll take a minute. Those cables are all run through a piece of PVC pipe under the control board. I’ll have to break it open to get to them. By the time I’m done the door will be open.”
“I can fight off the half-deads while you’re doing that. If you give me a weapon,” Caxton said.
Harelip glared at her. “You’re kidding.”
“No! Look, we have to do something, or they’re going to send every one of those things they have down here. Haven’t you figured it out yet? They’re coming for me. We’re wasting time—-just give me a gun!”
“Wait,” Harelip said, as if the door wasn’t rumbling open while they spoke. Already a half-dead had shoved one foot and part of its hip through the door. It was getting caught on its stab-proof vest, but at any second it would come lurching through, into the SHU where Caxton waited all but defenseless. “You’re saying that if I give you to them, they’ll leave the rest of us alone?”
Caxton’s heart skipped a beat.
“You’re a prison guard,” she said, finally.
“Yeah,” Harelip replied.
“That means you’re supposed to guard people. Not let them come to harm.”
“Uh-huh,” Harelip said.
Caxton shook her head. There was no time for this. “You fight them off—I’ll yank the cable,” she said, and ran toward the guard post.
At least this time Harelip didn’t argue. She moved to the door and slammed her baton against the head of the half-dead coming through the door. An arm holding a knife scythed down toward her, and she jumped back.
Inside the post Caxton dove under the control board and saw the PVC pipe Harelip had mentioned. It ran from the underside of the board down to the floor. It rattled slightly when she pulled at it, but didn’t come free. She could try to kick it free, but without any shoes on she’d probably just break her foot. She needed something to pry it loose with.
She spared a tenth of a second to glance over at the door. It was open nearly a foot wide now, more than enough for a half-dead to slip through. Harelip swung her baton and danced around knives, desperately trying to hold them back. Caxton needed to get the door closed immediately.
The chair that sat inside the guard post was made of wood. She picked it up and bashed it against the Lexan wall of the post and it shattered. Grabbing one chair leg, she ducked under the control board again and got the leg behind the pipe. With enough leverage, and the right angle—
The pipe snapped in half. A dozen thick cables in white plastic insulation were revealed inside. They were all the same, as far as she could tell. There was no way to know which one to yank. If she pulled the wrong one, she might cut power to the guard post, and then she would never get the door closed.
There was no other option. By the door Harelip was striking faster and faster, but she already had a bad cut on one ear and the side of her stab-proof vest was sliced open. It could protect her from a direct thrust, but slicing blows would eventually take it to pieces and then she’d have no protection at all. Caxton grabbed a cable at random and pulled. It came loose easily enough, but she couldn’t tell what effect it might have had. With one palm she slammed the red emergency lockdown button on the console.
Nothing happened.
“Okay,” Caxton breathed, and pulled another cable, then hit the button again.
Nothing.
“Come on!” she squealed, and pulled three of them at once. Then she slammed the button.
The buzzer sounded, and the door stopped opening. Then, slowly, far too slowly, it started to close again.
Caxton ran over to the door and nearly got brained by Harelip’s whirling baton. A half-dead was reaching in, trying to grab Harelip by the strap of her vest. Caxton grabbed the dead bastard’s arm and pulled it hard in the wrong direction. It snapped. The half-dead screamed.
Another one tried to get its foot inside the door, a big foot in a thick, steel-toed boot. Caxton grabbed the leg behind the ankle and pulled, hard, knocking the half-dead off its balance.
Harelip brought the end of her baton down hard on a half-dead’s head. The skull split open like a rotten melon. And then—
—the half-deads pulled back, away from the door. They had seen what happened when it closed before, and one of them had lost an arm. They were smart enough not to let any of their number get crushed this time.
When the door was finally, fully closed, Caxton leaned up hard against it and just tried to breathe for a while. She closed her eyes and didn’t think about anything. In a second she was going to have to deal with all of this. She was going to have to think about why vampires were attacking the prison, and what she was going to do about it. But for a second, at least, she could just lean there and be safe.
That was when she felt Harelip’s stun gun touch the small of her back.
16.
Franklin took off his sunglasses. The skin around his eyes was mostly gone, torn away by his own nails. If she’d had any doubts before, she was certain now—he was a half-dead. Malvern must have ordered him not to scratch his own face off, so that he could fit in better with the living people in the prison. He’d done the best he could, but he couldn’t resist gouging himself a little.
He gagged Clara and bound her hands behind her back with a strip of plastic that dug into her wrists. Then he left her alone. No one beat her, or stabbed her, or shoved her down a flight of stairs.
No one drank her blood.
Malvern made short work of the second prisoner, and the blood worked its magic on her.
Already the skin was starting to grow back over the hole in her forehead. Her hands didn’t look so much like bundles of twigs anymore—they were still mostly made of swollen knuckles and broken nails, but the balls of her thumbs looked positively fleshy. Her complexion was lightening, transforming from the brownish-yellow look of old, untanned leather toward more of the classic unhealthy pallor of an active vampire.
Her missing eye would never grow back, of course. Any wounds a vampire suffered before its first death were never healed, no matter how much blood they consumed. But the one working eye she possessed was growing clearer, and a dull red ember seemed to burn far back in its depths.
How many victims would it take before she was back to full strength? Until she was as powerful as the bloodthirsty killing machines Laura had been fighting for so long? Even then, of course, it wouldn’t last. For a vampire as old as Malvern, it would take a constant influx of new blood to maintain this level of vigor. Probably after the interrupted Tupperware party, or after the bar she’d attacked, there had been this same transformation, and then she had just rotted away again almost instantly afterward. But here, now—there was the promise of more blood to come. These few victims, Clara understood, were just the first of many. Malvern would be able to support her habit for a very, very long time now that she controlled the place. There would be no shortage of bodies for her to drain, not in this prison.
Clara stared at the warden. The older woman stared back calmly, without a trace of guilt on her features.
“If you want me to feel bad for these two, you can save your energy,” the warden said, reading Clara’s expression. “This one,” she said, kicking the corpse of the young blond, “was in for IDSI.”
Clara winced. IDSI was “indecent deviant sexual intercourse.” It was what the courts were calling the crime that had once been known as sodomy, and it could cover a wide range of offenses, none of them pretty.
“She raped her little sister with a hairbrush, if you want to know. The other one has been in and out of my prison since she was eighteen. Every time we let her out she would go right to her crack dealer and whore herself for a piece of rock. Before she knew it she would be right back in here. A total waste of human potential, and the kind of recidivist who has no desire to be rehabilitated. I’m not going to lose any sleep over either of them.”
Malvern rose slowly from where she’d been kneeling over the second victim. “Enough moralizing, girl. What shall ye tell me of the men ye cannot trust?”
The warden looked at Malvern with an expression of pure reverence. “Your half-deads have been here all day, killing the COs I knew I couldn’t trust and replacing them. The rest might take things the wrong way, so they’re being herded even now into cells. We’ll lock them up and give them the same choice we give the prisoners.”
“Very good. And of the authorities outside these walls?”
The warden held up her BlackBerry. “I’ve been in touch with the local police department and the regional bureau of the state police. I’ve told them we had a small riot but that it was contained and we didn’t need any help. That’ll make sure nobody comes within ten miles of the prison until I give them the word that everything’s clear. We should have at least twenty-four hours before anyone starts asking questions, and even then they won’t know what’s really going on. During an emergency all the phone lines out of the prison are shut down except for my private line. We’re in total lockdown, and therefore in total control of the facility.”
“Very good,” Malvern said.
Clara tried to pay attention to what they were saying. She knew it was important—she had to understand the situation she’d stumbled into. But her eyes kept refusing to look at the vampire or the warden. They kept straying to look again at the bloodless corpses lying on the carpet between them.
Malvern followed her gaze. “Are ye thinking, Clara, that ye’re next?” she asked.
Clara could say nothing with the gag in her mouth. She knew her eyes had to be very wide. She’d been forced to watch as Malvern gorged herself, again and again. Now she could feel sweat rolling down her forehead and toward her eyes. Fear sweat.
“Ah, but ye’re different from this pile of corpses,” Malvern told her. There was the ghost of a chuckle in her voice. “Or at least—ye have somewhat that makes ye different. Special. Do ye know what it is?”
She waited patiently, as if expecting Clara to answer.
Clara turned her head slowly from side to side.
Malvern leaned close, close enough to kiss. Her skin was so cold and—and wrong—that Clara felt her own gooseflesh pulling back away from the contact. Malvern whispered in her ear. “Ye’re loved.”
Clara whined in fear. She knew exactly what Malvern meant. Her throat tried to form a word, even if her mouth couldn’t finish it. Laura.
Malvern nodded as if she had heard Clara perfectly. “She’ll come for ye, across any measure of space or peril. Right now she’s hiding behind a locked door where I just can’t reach. Yet when she knows ye’re in danger, how long do ye suppose it shall take her to come a-running?”
Malvern smiled. It is not a pretty thing when any vampire smiles. The teeth seem to spread outward, to grow even larger, to grow even in number. Malvern’s grin could draw blood all on its own.
She spun away, and almost danced across the room. It couldn’t last, but for the moment her skin looked almost pink. Almost flushed with blood. “Someone remove that rag from her mouth. I’d speak with her now.”
A half-dead reached up behind Clara’s head and untied her gag.
“She’s too smart for that,” Clara said, all at once. “She won’t fall for your trap. Anyway, I broke up with her today. Most likely she hates me right now and wants me to die.”
Malvern glanced briefly at the warden, who shook her head in negation.
“I was listening to their conversation the whole time. They spent most of it
talking about you, Miss Malvern. They never talked about breaking up at all.”
Malvern smiled again, but it wasn’t such a maniacal grin this time. It was more of a shrewd, knowing leer. “You’re very brave. But I must insist—I’ve planned this ever so well. Timed it to a nicety. I found the one hour, in all the month, when you two were in one place. Have faith, girl. I’m cleverer than you by half.”
Clara bit her tongue before she could say anything more.
She didn’t want to accidentally tell Malvern something she might find useful. Instead, she thought, she needed to steer the conversation around to where she was learning things she didn’t know before. “That’s the whole point of this? Of taking over the prison? Just to get Laura?”
Malvern shrugged happily. “How I wish life could be that simple. No, child. This dungeon vile can offer me so much more. Look, already, how I bloom like a flower in a hothouse.” She held up her arms, which were clearly plumping out.
“But it can’t last. You killed all those guards, and took their blood, but what about tomorrow night? You’re going to get hungry again. And just by being here you’ll draw attention to yourself. The police will be all over this prison by morning. They’ll surround it, set up kill zones around every exit. You may have gotten one good meal, but it’ll be your last.”
Malvern’s head drooped forward as if she were considering everything Clara had said. Then she lifted it again and stared out the window at the stars she could see over the curtain wall. “When I was a child of mortality, like yourself, I had taken a profession up, namely, I ran a gaming house. A pleasant enough suite of rooms in Manchester where gentlemen could come together and play pitch and faro—card games. I always forget no one plays faro anymore. They played whist, as well, following the rules that Hoyle wrote. Do men still play whist when they feel lucky?”
“Really, really, old men,” Clara said.
Malvern chuckled. “’Twas all the rage, whist, in the year of our Lord seventeen-and-twelve. It is a game played without speaking, where only the eyes may make strategy. It was considered thus a poor game for women, as we were believed unable to go so long without gossiping.” Malvern shot a sly glance at Clara. “But oh, how the discriminating gentlemen favored it— for hours they would sit and be still and the only true thing in the universe seemed the fall of the lead, and the dance that followed, as each played looking to take book, and then the odd tricks—”
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