by Smith, Bryan
The warden smiled faintly and took another sip of whiskey before saying, “Out of here.” She raised her free hand and made an extravagant waving motion. “Out of Prison 13.”
“You and me. Together.”
The warden nodded, a new glint of eagerness in her eyes. An excitement had flared within her now that she’d spoken the words.
And there was an underlying element—fear.
Curiouser and curiouser, Jessica thought.
“I thought the only way out of here for inmates was in a pine box.”
The warden surprised her with a laugh. “Not even that. Normally the only exit for someone like you would be via a plume of black smoke, belched out by the smokestack in the crematorium.”
Jessica glanced at her glass of whiskey, opting against another sip before again meeting the warden’s gaze. “And just to be clear, you’re talking about an escape. I’d get out alive.”
That new eagerness in the woman’s eyes intensified. “Yes.”
“Interesting. Why would you need to escape? You’re the boss here. This is your domain. Why would you want to get out? And why would you need the help of an inmate?
The warden sighed. “Because, quite unexpectedly, a change is in the air. An ill wind blows, one that does not bode well for me. I have been guilty of complacency before and, in the interest of self-preservation, I don’t want to commit that sin again. I want to take action preemptively rather than waiting for events to force my hand.”
Jessica thought about it a moment. Everything she was hearing was in perfect alignment with the rumors passed down to Alice by the guards. Upon first hearing those, Jessica had thought them slightly hysterical and exaggerated, which was the nature of rumors in environments such as this one. Things she’d witnessed on D-Block since last night had done much to sway her opinion in the other direction. The warden’s revelations pretty much confirmed the reality behind the rumors.
“Okay. I’m in.”
The warden’s brow creased as her expression registered a slight surprise. “Really? I thought you’d need more convincing.”
Jessica shook her head. “I don’t have much to lose by going along with you, warden.”
The warden smiled. “Please call me Evelyn. Now that we’re allies, we should be on a first name basis.”
Jessica smiled.
Like fuck we’re allies, bitch.
“Okay, Evelyn. How are we getting out of here? And why do you need me?”
The warden set her empty whiskey glass on the desk and pushed away from its edge, coming closer to Jessica. “Prior to your arrival here, I read an extensive background report about you. It’s no exaggeration to say you are one of the deadliest women on the planet, if not the deadliest. Originally, I had hoped to make use of your unique talents another way, to eventually make you a covert member of my team here, but I sensed you would not be easily manipulated or wooed.”
Jessica grunted. “So you planted a spy as my new cellmate.”
The warden smiled. “Ah, yes. Poor, dear Spider. Shame what happened to her.”
“Yeah. A shame.”
The warden arched an eyebrow. “I don’t detect much in the way of remorse in your tone.”
Jessica shrugged. “I did what needed doing at the time I did it. Like always.”
“And that’s exactly why we’re talking now. I no longer have the luxury of playing the long game with you. Things are happening at an accelerating pace. I’m no longer sure which of my own staff members, if any, I can still trust. We will never be friends, you and I, but I believe you are a pragmatist above all else. I need someone at my side who can adapt to rapidly changing circumstances and who, above all, will not hesitate to kill anyone who gets in her way. Also, I understand you are able to pilot a helicopter.”
Jessica leaned back in the chair. The warden had come uncomfortably close. Another step closer and she’d be standing right over her. “That’s right. And, yeah, I’ll kill anyone you want if it means getting out of here.”
The warden reached out and lightly stroked Jessica’s cheek with the back of a hand. “Excellent. Now take off your clothes.”
Jessica sighed. “Listen…I’ve had about enough of being made to do things I’d rather not do.”
The warden stroked her cheek twice more before taking her hand away. “I’m not proposing a sexual interlude, Jessica, though maybe we can revisit that idea once we're safely away from here. It could be your way of thanking me for giving you your life back. But, no, the reason I’m asking you to disrobe is to exchange the hideous uniform you’re currently wearing for a much snazzier one.”
This confused Jessica. The feeling didn’t last long, however, as the warden moved away from her and returned to her desk, where she opened a drawer and took out a pile of familiar-looking clothes. Except for the white blouse, the garments were all black. She’d seen these clothes before.
On Helga.
“Are those what I think they are?”
The warden nodded as she again approached Jessica. “Indeed, they are.”
“And you want me to wear that shit?”
Another nod. “I do.”
Jessica stared at the pile of clothes, thinking about it. “Helga is taller than me. These things won’t fit me exactly.”
“They’ll be close enough. You are only a few inches shorter than Helga and your bust is only slightly smaller. And you are both blondes. Put them on please.”
With some reluctance, Jessica accepted the pile of clothes, passing her still mostly full whiskey glass to the warden. She frowned. “Hold on. When exactly are we making this escape attempt?”
The warden knocked back the rest of the whiskey and said, “I thought it was obvious. We’re doing it now.”
“Oh.”
“Is that a problem?”
Jessica shook her head. “It isn’t. But the situation must be even worse than you’ve described if you’re this desperate. At least from your point of view.”
The warden nodded. “You are correct. And as I have already said, I wish to act preemptively. Now please hurry and do as I’ve asked.”
Jessica shrugged and rose from the chair. She felt the warden’s eyes on her as she hurriedly removed the prison uniform. The scrutiny felt every bit as slimy as being eyed by a male sexual predator. But Jessica made no objection. Compared to what she’d already endured, it was nothing.
And the warden was right. The fit wasn’t so far off as to be glaring. There was a bit of looseness in the garments, but this was hidden easily enough with some adjustments. The fit still wasn’t perfect, but it would pass scrutiny at a glance. Jessica did feel a bit of instinctive revulsion at having to wear faux-SS gear, but she swept aside her distaste. If it meant getting out of here, some extra psychological discomfort was a small price to pay.
“Okay, what now?”
The warden took a 9mm pistol from the top drawer of her desk. “Take this and sit back down. Hold it in your lap.”
Jessica did as the warden asked. A flickering sense that maybe she was being set up for something came and went. She couldn’t completely trust this woman. A frame-up of some kind wasn’t entirely out of the question. But Jessica’s gut told her this wasn’t the case, that the warden’s account of the situation and what she wanted of her was essentially true.
“My office is soundproofed,” the warden told her, as she again seated herself behind her desk. “In a moment, I will summon the men who brought you here. I will ask them to close the door. When they glimpse you from behind, they will assume you are Helga. My living quarters is adjacent to this office. The presence of the vice-warden coupled with your apparent disappearance will not immediately strike them as unusual.”
Jessica nodded. “What do you want me to do when they close the door?”
“When you hear it click shut, calmly rise and turn around. They will be armed, of course, but you are the world’s deadliest assassin. You will kill them a
ll before they even sense there’s a threat.”
Jessica said nothing, just nodded again.
All at once, she was back in her element. It was as if she were on a field assignment and the warden was a rogue official in a corrupt foreign government. They were working together to bring the regime down. In a twisted way, that was exactly what was happening.
The warden pushed a button, spoke into the intercom speaker on her desk. A reply from the faux-SS officer came back almost instantaneously, a terse acknowledgement of the warden’s request for the officer and his men to enter. Jessica heard a click followed by the sound of the door behind her swinging open. Her hand tightened on the grip of the pistol in her lap. The warden and the officer exchanged a few words as the men came into the office.
By that time, Jessica was already standing, having risen as the door opened. She stood facing the warden during the brief conversation that ensued with her hands held at waist level in front of her. Nothing she heard aroused her suspicions. She heard the door click shut again. The warden was distracting the men with some lies about the apparent disappearance of the inmate they’d escorted to her office.
Jessica no longer cared about the content of the conversation, not by then. She was watching the warden’s face, listening to her tone. When that tone shifted slightly and her eyes flicked toward Jessica, she knew the time to act had arrived.
She pivoted smoothly about and shot the officer point blank in the face. A hole punched through the bridge of his nose and blood and brains blew out through a bigger hole at the back of his head. The men dressed as SS soldiers gasped in shock and made belated attempts to get their weapons up and aimed, but it was too late for either of them. Jessica shot both men in the face. They dropped to the floor and didn’t move. She had killed all three men with a single shot each within the space of just a few seconds.
Once it was done, Jessica lowered the gun and looked at the warden. She allowed a moment to elapse as the ringing in her ears faded slightly. Then she said, “Okay, what now?”
The warden smiled. “Now we get out of here.”
29.
Only one guard came around to look into the death of Dr. Woronov. This was surprising. The apparent murder of a senior staff member at the hands of the Frauenschaft surely warranted an on-scene appearance by someone higher up in the chain of command than the guy who actually showed up.
Livia, in fact, had expected multiple representatives of that cadre of upper echelon men and women who played at being members of the SS. Despite the dress-up aspect of their jobs, they were a genuine security detail, albeit a small one. Their primary responsibility was the security of staff housing and associated areas. They only ventured into the cellblocks for matters of the highest importance.
The doctor’s murder, apparently, was not such a matter. Instead one lowly member of the D-Block guard staff dropped by, arriving nearly an hour after Livia phoned in her report of the incident. Even more surprising was the identity of the guard.
It was that big oddball again, Ted, the same one who’d wheeled in the member of the black market gang earlier. He was nobody, basically. Livia was baffled. It was like sending Barney Fife to look into the slaying of an A-list actor or senator.
Livia had spent the hour after placing the call in a state of increasing panic. She continually rehearsed and modified her answers to the barrage of questions she’d anticipated. An image of herself cracking while being interrogated by a seasoned investigator recurred frequently in her mind, a byproduct of decades of watching police procedural shows on TV.
Ted had a bored look on his face as he gave the scene a cursory inspection. “What happened here?”
Livia swallowed a lump in her throat as she pushed back her panic. “The Frauenschaft killed her. You know, that Nazi gang.”
Ted nodded. “Uh huh.” He gave the doctor’s body a last look before saying, “Okay then.”
After that, he went to work hoisting the corpse up off the floor. Once he had the body firmly in his arms, he carried it over to the gurney he’d wheeled into the infirmary with him. He dumped the body on the gurney and grinned as he poked an index finger through the hole in the dead woman’s cheek.
“Shame about what they did to the bitch’s face. She was a looker.” He directed that grin at Livia and winked as he cupped his groin with one of his big hands. “Not that I’ve ever let something like that stop me.”
Livia’s mouth dropped open and she blinked slowly a moment before replying. “Um…what are you saying, exactly?”
Ted cackled as he laced his fingers behind his head and mimed a sexual thrusting motion with his groin. “I’m saying I like them cold, girlie. Haven’t you heard the gossip on the block about me?” Another cackle. “Fuck-’em=dead Ted, that’s what they call me.”
Livia frowned. “Huh.”
She felt something similar to what she’d experienced last night, when the prospect of eating a person had come into her life as a real possibility for the first time. Being something of a monster herself, it wasn’t a thing she objected to in theory. At the same time, she’d been in no great hurry to become the next Dr. Lecter. The specter of necrophilia aroused similar feelings, albeit not as intense. After all, she specialized in the defilement of human bodies. This was just another form of that.
The thing that really bothered her was the mental image of this big goon plunging his cock into the dead body of someone she’d once had sex with on a regular basis. He wasn’t worthy of the doctor. Even keeping in mind what the woman had done to her last night, he just wasn’t fucking worthy of her.
That in part explained what she did when Ted turned away from her and began to push the gurney out of the infirmary. The other part of it was something that happened at a subconscious level. It was a breaking point moment, a sudden reaction to an accumulation of things, a building sense of everything suddenly falling apart.
Livia snatched a fresh scalpel from her supply cart and ran after the guard. Sensing her rapid approach as he neared the double doors, he’d just started to turn toward her when she leapt up on his back and clamped her arms and legs around him in a death-grip. He staggered backward and flailed at her with his hands, but she held on tight as she drew the blade of the scalpel across his throat. Blood jetted into the air, spraying the ceiling and the floor as the dying man continued to spin around and flail at her in a desperate attempt to dislodge her. Before he could surrender to the inevitable, Livia took the scalpel from his throat and plunged it into one of his eyes. This elicited a gurgle that, if not for the hole in the man’s throat, would have been a scream.
At last, he collapsed to his knees. Livia let go of him and moved away as he toppled over. She stared at the twitching body until it went still. After that, she moved backward in a slow, numb way, not stopping until she heard the voice to her right.
“What now?”
Livia’s head slowly swiveled in that direction. Spider was sitting up in her bed again. The look on her face was more curious than afraid. Livia figured this was because the woman was in no position to do anything about her situation anyway. She had a badly broken leg and was cuffed to the bed. There was no way out for her, so what was the point in being afraid?
Livia laughed, realizing that, at root, their situations were no different.
There was no way out for her either.
She leaned against Spider’s bed and sighed tiredly as she said, “What now? I have no idea.”
30.
Alice didn’t know what to do with herself after Jessica was taken away. For so long, she’d believed in the unfaltering strength of her organization. Now, though, with the removal of just a couple key assets, the gang’s underlying weakness had been exposed. Sure, she had a network of underlings, but she hadn’t kept them close, leaving all the interpersonal stuff up to Lucy and Shonda, who, of course, were gone now.
She was alone.
Alice spent most of that first hour without Jessica rep
eatedly cursing her shortsightedness. Early on she’d entertained the notion of venturing out into the wider D-Block population, perhaps even to seek out some of those underlings. She didn’t know much about those girls, but she knew they tended to stay together. If she could just get with them, she might find temporary protection from the myriad threats facing her until Jessica returned.
If she returned.
That was never a given when those Nazi fuckers came around to take someone away. In fact, when that happened, it was more or less a guarantee you’d never fucking see that person again. She’d tried to derive some tiny measure of hope from that reassuring look Jessica had given her in those last moments, but in the end she accepted this as foolish.
Jessica was either dead or, as far as Alice was concerned, might as well be.
So she was on her own, not a good thing any time, but especially not now, with the way things were deteriorating inside the prison. Getting to those presumed allies within the lower ranks of her network felt like her only good option. However, she got an uncomfortable crawling sensation in her gut each time she took a look outside her cell and went to the third-floor railing to check out the situation below.
Here and there along the landing other women were standing around outside their cells. Some of them gave Alice long, nasty looks as their heads turned her way. And the main floor below was crowded with more inmates than usual. There was a loud and growing buzz of agitated conversation, which was undoubtedly a reaction to the increasing sense of something being amiss. Rebellion was in the air. The vibe reminded Alice intensely of the riot a year ago.
She’d barely survived the fucking riot.
And so, although she craved the comfort of possible allies, she couldn’t stomach the idea of wading into that seething mass of humanity. There were too many bitches out there who resented her position in the prison hierarchy. Any one of them wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage of the situation and ice her while she was unprotected.