by JJ Zep
At the center of the room was a massive oak desk and dwarfed behind it sat Virgil Pratt. He had an open ledger in front of him and his white Stetson was placed on the desk to one side. Without it Pratt seemed even smaller, and his thinning hair was combed over in a vain attempt to mask his balding pate.
Platt continued flipping through the journal with his finger trailing down the columns like a forensic accountant hot on the heels of a swindler.
Without looking up he said, “What is the trigger?”
When I didn’t answer he looked up from his book. His eyes were magnified by his glasses, and the yellowish tint gave him the infected look of a Z. “What is the trigger?” he repeated.
“Like I told Jake and Elwood back in Kentucky, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“And Jake and Elwood are?” Pratt asked calmly.
“The Blues Brothers.”
“The Blues Brothers.” Pratt repeated, “Like from the movie?”
“Uh huh.”
“You a fucking comedian mister?”
“No but, like I told Jake and Elwood…”
“Cut the crap, mister.” Pratt shouted, all pretense at calmness gone now. “Pendragon’s got a million dollar bounty out on you, and the first thing his agents want to know is ‘where’s the trigger’, so what is the fucking trigger?”
“And like I said, I don’t fucking know?”
“How about I drop you in a cell with a couple of Zs?”
“How about I reach across this desk and twist your stupid head into a new shape?”
“This is useless,” someone said from behind me and I recognized the voice as Tucci, “he knows shit, I say we just feed him to the Z’s.”
“He knows something alright and I’ll get it out of him if I have to open up his head and pick through his brains with a pitchfork.” Pratt reached into the desk drawer and produced a small vial of blue liquid. He uncorked the vial and took a swig.
“Pratt, are you fucking crazy!” Tucci exploded. “That shit is untested! It’s not even intended for human consumption! That will fry your brains faster that eggs on a griddle!”
“Maybe so,” Pratt said staring at me and starting to take in deep breaths like a bull getting ready to charge.
“I told you just a drop, just a drop diluted in a quart of water. Jesus Pratt, how long you been mainlining this stuff.”
Pratt didn’t answer, he was looking at me and his eyes had taken on the intensity of a carnivore eyeing prey. For a moment I thought he was going to launch himself over the desk and tear my throat out.
But then he started to twitch and spasm, like a man in the grip of a seizure. Froth started bubbling from his mouth and a cry that was part groan, part growl, escaped him.
He rose slowly to his feet and glared at me through homicidal eyes. His hands gripped the edge of the desk and I saw his muscles tense as his started tipping the heavy counter towards me. I thought I could hear his nails carving grooves in the solid wood.
In the next moment, the concentration seemed to ebb from his face and his features were those of a small, confused child. Then he started heaving and threw up a vie concoction of half digested meat and blue-tinged vomit. It smelled vaguely of blueberries.
The desk crashed back down and Pratt fell to his knees and I could hear him heaving on the floor. After a while he pulled himself up, leaning heavily on the desk. His face was the color of putty and there was blue drool trailing down from his lips. He swiped it away with the back of his sleeve.
“You see there, that’s what I’m talking…” Tucci started.
“Stanley, shut the fuck up,” Pratt slurred. And Tucci did.
Pratt took a while to compose himself then, shouted, “Olaf!” The big read-headed man flew into the room immediately, almost like he’d been poised with a grip on the door handle.
“Yes, sir?”
“Take Mr. Collins here down to D Block. Hold him till I get there.”
“Sure thing,” Olaf said. He was grinning. Pratt was grinning too, and some of the color seemed to have returned to his face.
twenty
I was escorted back downstairs by Olaf and his sidekick, Pitbull. We crossed the entrance hall and made a right turn towards the east wing. I could see an extra level of security here, a barrier fence of stout iron bars with a security door set in it. A hand painted sign hung from the bars, with the words, “Death Row” roughly stenciled on it.
There was a guard at the gate, a biker with greasy black hair and a bandana pulled over his nose like a western outlaw. He was slouched in a chair, flicking through a girly magazine and paid no attention to our approach. Olaf kicked the chair and he got lazily up and unlocked the security door.
By this time I had already figured out why the guard was wearing the bandana. The stench in here was worse than anything I’d smelt in my life. If you can imagine an abattoir in which all of the meat had been left to go putrid you’d only be scratching the surface.
“Kind of gets up your nose, don’t it,” Olaf said, then took in a deep breath like a man savoring the scent of a spring meadow.
D Block was similar in design to the cellblock where I’d been kept. There was a wide corridor down the middle with blank walls to either side for the first twenty feet of so, before you got to the cells. The floor was covered with dirty gray linoleum tiles with an inset row of red tile running either side. The walls were a similarly, dull dove gray.
At the very end of the corridor, past the cells, I could see a wide, reinforced steel door set into the wall, probably to allow access to the yard
The lighting was poor in here and it was deathly quite. An appropriate metaphor may have been quiet as the grave but I quickly pushed that thought from my mind.
We’d reached the first of the cells now and much as I tried not to look, my head was drawn to the right as though someone else had taken over control of my neck muscles.
There was a man in the cell, sitting on the floor and looking like the survivor of a particularly brutal war. He looked to have suffered several blows from an axe or a machete and had a deep groove running down the center of his skull, with a gray-brown mess oozing from it. One of his ears had been almost entirely severed and hung from his head by a couple of sinews. Whoever had used the axe on him had applied the blunt end of it to his face. His nose was smashed to pulp and one of his cheekbones driven upward, popping the eyeball from its socket on its trajectory.
His injuries didn’t end there either. His chest had deep and festering lacerations and one of his arms was missing from the elbow down.
The man was chewing on the corpse of a rat and didn’t pay any attention to us at first. Then he suddenly threw his meal aside and charged the bars, crashing into them and stretching his arm through trying to get at us.
“Sweet, ain’t he?” Olaf joked.
The next cell contained a man who’s body seemed entirely intact from the shoulders upward. Below that though he was severely burnt and in places the flesh had been entirely consumed, exposing blackened bone. This man had large blue eyes, tinged with the yellow stain of the virus. He looked at us with a soulful, sorrowful expression, and I felt almost sorry for him.
In the third cell was a woman chewing on what looked like the ribcage of an infant. In the forth, six young children, the oldest about ten, each carrying terrible injuries. One child lay curled up in the corner, possibly dead.
By this time the terrible stench and the horrifying injuries of the Z’s had become a dull blur in my mind. Call it a coping mechanism but somehow my brain seemed to have shut down most of its sensory receptors, so that it all seemed like a bad dream, or a b-list horror movie.
But Olaf, had one more surprise for me. “You’ve got to meet Zelda,” he said and dragged me across to the opposite row of cells and to the last cell in that row.
The Z’s by this time were fully aware of our presence and most of them were at the bars, stretching their arms through in a vain attempt to reach us.
In my experience, other than in the very early stages of infection, Z’s are usually silent. But when you put a lot of them together they seem to emit a low frequency hum, kind of like the sound made by high-tension electrical cables. A few seconds of listening to this symphony of insanity and you find yourself wanting to run from the room screaming.
However, the sight of Zelda drove that buzzing from my ears immediately. I’d expected a monstrosity and saw instead a tall and very beautiful young woman standing in the gloom at the rear of the cell with her back against the wall and her hands held behind her.
“Handsome ain’t, she?” Olaf said, in a tone bordering on reverence, then spoilt it by grabbing his crotch and shouting, “Hey Zelda, want some!”
Zelda came walking to the front of the cell, swaying her hips like a supermodel. She was wearing a short red dress and matching pumps.
“Yeah mama!” Olaf shouted and Pitbull sniggered.
Zelda stood holding the bars, looking like Oklahoma’s most glamorous inmate. I couldn’t see an injury on her and even though her make-up was smudged and her hair was a mess, she was gorgeous.
But then she looked at us and ran her tongue over her teeth, and while in other circumstances it may have been seductive, in this case it was the action of a predator, an alligator perhaps, or a black widow spider.
“Show us your titties, Zelda!” Olaf was shouting.
“Cut that out,” Virgil Pratt said to our left and when I looked that way I saw him approaching with Tucci at his heels.
Tucci had a handkerchief pushed to his face and was looking slightly green. Pratt on the other hand seemed to have regained his composure and his swagger was back.
“I see you’ve met Zelda,“ Pratt said, then to her, “Hey, honey.”
Zelda stood at the bars watching impassively.
“Sad story,” Pratt said. “I took Zelda from a convey in New Mexico, and I gotta tell ya, I thought she was the one. But, the bitch didn’t want to play ball. Kept ragging on about how we killed her old man, and how she’d rather be dead, and on and on and on.
“So we zombified her. Fucking amazing thing to see, I can tell ya. The bitch never would go down on me, one little syringe of Z blood to that sweet little tushy of hers and now suddenly she wants to eat everyone. Regular man-eater is our Zelda.”
He laughed then and his men joined in. Even Tucci managed a chuckle from behind his handkerchief.
“She looks sweet don’t she?” Pratt continued, “but don’t let that fool you.”
He turned to Olaf, “What happened to the last dude we threw in with her?”
“She fucking tore him apart. Ate his dick and all,” Olaf said gleefully.
“Something else you should know about our Zel.” Pratt continued, “you can give her some of that blue shit of Tucci’s and she settles right down. She’ll give you a good time all right. Only problem is you never know when she’s gonna turn. And believe me, you don’t want to be caught with your dick in her mouth when she does.”
Behind me Olaf chuckled and Pitbull sniggered like Muttley in the Wacky Races cartoons.
Pratt was suddenly serious again, “I was considering giving you ol’ Zel here as a bunkmate, Chris. You look like a feller who hasn’t known the pleasures of a woman for some time, truth be told.
“But, as a businessman, one of the things I’ve learned is to make best use of your assets. Like if you’re running a diner and someone leaves a itty-bitty piece of steak behind, do you throw it in the trash? No sir, you grind it up and put it in the meatloaf.
“So, having Zelda here chew off your dick, much as that would be something to see, just ain’t profitable. You can be put to better use.”
Behind me I heard a loud clang, as the security gate, the one we’d come in through was opened and then after a bit closed again.
“So, Chris” Pratt said. “You got something you want to share with me?”
“Yeah,“ I said, “You’re a psychopath. Look it up.”
“I was afraid you were going to be a hard-on about this,” Pratt said, and then snapped his fingers.
I could hear the Z’s becoming restless again and realized that with everything going on I’d completely forgotten about their infernal humming. Now it cut through like a buzz saw.
And then something happened that made it fade out instantly. The boy, the one I’d seen on the bus, was pushed forward.
“Hey there feller,” Pratt said, in his most convivial tone, “What’s your name?”
“Kelly,” the boy mumbled.
“Wow, that’s a cool name,” Pratt said, “I’m Virgil, want to shake on it?
“Sure” the boy said and Pratt took his hand and shook it.
The kid was about 15 years old with brown hair and freckles across the bridge of his nose. He was thin to the point of being boney and had a pale complexion and girlish features. His eyes were downcast but he lifted them shyly now and caught my eye with that same haunted look I’d seen on the bus.
“Tell me Kelly,” Pratt said, “you got a girlfriend?”
Kelly shook his head, no.
“Ah come on, handsome feller like yourself, surely there’s some special lady back home. You can tell your uncle Virgil.”
Again the boy shook his head.
“But you must have kissed a girl right?”
“No,” Kelly said and continued looking at his shoes.
“So what do you think of this pretty lady right here?” Pratt asked, lifting the boy’s chin and forcing him to look at Zelda.
“She’s pretty,” Kelly said.
I could see where this was going. “Pratt,” I said, “for Christ’s sake, he’s just a kid.”
“Mr. Collins talks again you take that night stick of yours and break his head open,” Pratt said, talking to Olaf.
Then he said to Kelly, “Would you like to kiss this pretty lady?”
Kelly shook his head.
“You wouldn’t? You ain’t queer are ya?
I could see Kelly blushing deeply.
Pratt forced his head up. “I’m talking to you kid,” he said, his voice acquiring an edge, “How’d you like to pop your cherry with this fine piece of ass? How you like a taste of that sweet…”
“Pratt,” I shouted, “Leave…” And then Olaf’s nightstick collided with my head. He’d have knocked me cold too, but I caught the arc of his swing at the corner of my vision and ducked, and my shoulder took the brunt. Still it hurt like a son of a bitch and put me down.
I could hear Pratt shouting hysterically, “Who’s got the keys? Who’s got the fucking keys? Get this kid in the cell!”
Olaf waded in on me again and caught me a glancing blow in the ribs. Pitbull meanwhile laid in with his boots.
“Pratt,” I shouted, “okay, I’ll tell you about the trigger!”
“Stop!” Pratt screamed, “Olaf, did I tell you to kill the man. Back off and get him on his feet.”
I was yanked up and Pratt swaggered over to me with a smile on his face, “I knew you’d come to senses,” he said. “So tell me.”
“First you let the kid go,” I said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Pratt said, then to his goons, “put the fucking kid in the larder.”
Kelly was marched away and I said, “Not in here. I can’t think with all these Zs humming.”
Back in the Warder’s Office, I told them what I knew about the trigger. I was somewhat economical with the truth, down playing Joe Thursday’s role in the whole thing and giving him the first name that came to my mind, Dom Buchanan.
When I’d finished, Pratt said, “That’s it? That’s the big secret? So the military fucks up and releases a deadly virus and we end up with this cluster fuck. That’s the big secret? We already knew that.” Then as an afterthought he added, “You ain’t holding out on us now are ya?
“That’s all I know. I swear.”
“There has to be something more to this,” Tucci said, cradling his chin like Rodin’s Thinker, “somethin
g between the lines, something we’re not seeing.”
“Either that or this dude’s holding out on us,” Pratt said.
“No,” Tucci said, “no, I don’t believe he is. But there’s something we just aren’t seeing.”
“Either way,” Pratt said, “we’re done here. You can go back to your cell now. We’re having us a little knees up tonight, so you and them other two boys better rest up. You’re the main attraction.”
twenty one
Back at the cell I told Babs what had happened.
“Lot of activity going on outside, too,” Babs said. “I tried to get up on the bunk to get a look but they worked me over pretty good the other day. Think I might have a few busted ribs. Tried to ask our friend Roy here to check it out, but he’s been snoring it up all day.”
“I’m awake asshole,” Roy said from the next cell. “You’re not the only one took a beating.”
Yeah, but you’re a corporation man, one of the elite.”
“Har-dee-fucking-har. You freelancers are always so full of shit. Anyway, all they’re doing out there is putting up a compound, probably to take overflow from the prison.”
I jumped up onto the bunk and took a look outside. All four sides of the compound had been erected creating an enclosure of some fifty by fifty feet. The bikers were now fixing razor wire to the fence on the inside of the enclosure, starting at ground level up to about six feet in height.
There was also a smaller enclosure, attached to the main one, with an inter-leading gate, and a walkway leading from the enclosure to D Block.
When I described this to Babs he said right away, “That ain’t no enclosure gentlemen, that’s a fighting cage.”
“Bullshit,” Roy said.
“Delude yourself if you want to, my friend,” said Babs. “That’s a fighting cage alright. And like the man said to Chris, we’re the main attraction. What do you think Pratt has in mind? Open mike night at the local comedy club?”
Roy was silent for a bit and then he said, “Pendragon won’t stand for it.”