“Roll call.”
“Seriously?”
Black Jesus didn’t have to answer. As far as Emmett knew, the man was always serious, so he didn’t know why he’d even bothered asking. He sighed heavily and walked over to an inmate body and flipped it over.
“John Connelly,” he said. Black Jesus made a note of it.
It wasn’t like Emmett had anything pressing to do. His only agenda was to find and kill the monster maker, Dr. Weiss, which could wait a day or two (or two hundred). The world he’d left behind when he’d gone into prison was obviously gone. The idea of making his way to Texas to fulfill his mission alone was frankly terrifying, especially since he didn’t really know how the world worked anymore. Black Jesus was a good man. Emmett could trust him. He could trust Wiley too, he supposed. But the old captain was a much better conversation partner. Regardless, if his CO wanted to inventory the losses, Emmett might as well help. The hard conversation about what was going to happen now was inevitable, but this would postpone it some. Maybe give him enough time to come up with an argument for murdering Dr. Weiss the old black man would actually accept.
He moved some debris off an inmate with his face too shot up to identify. He checked the serial stitched on his prison uniform.
“54-69-8-90.”
“William Martinez,” the Captain said after a short pause and made a note of it in his logbook. Emmett looked at him with an impressed smile and chuckled to himself. The man had apparently memorized all their convict serial numbers. Why the fuck? he thought, but it didn’t matter why. Not really. All that mattered was that Emmett was really starting to like the guy and was dreading more and more the talk they were about to have. A talk he needed to be prepared for.
Next to one of the dead Rent-a-Cops, a combat shotgun was lying on the ground. Emmett knelt down and checked the dead man’s pockets. He found a handful of extra shells, which he slipped into his socks one by one as discreetly as he could as he went about the business of identifying the formerly incarcerated dead.
When they were done with the inventory, Emmett circled back to the shotgun, knelt, and checked the circular clip. It was loaded. Apparently the poor bastard had gotten only a single shot off before one of Black Jesus’s deputies put a bullet into his chest. He carefully watched the CO finish up making his notations in the logbook. Of course, Emmett had no way of knowing anything about Captain Waters’s trusted convicts turning out to be not trustworthy at all—at least not yet. But if he had, it wouldn’t have changed anything. By the time the captain looked up, Emmett was already on his feet looking as innocent as a choirboy at his first Communion.
“Fifty-nine accounted for,” the CO said, “including Mr. DuPont and yourself.”
Emmett slipped his foot under the shotgun as he nodded. “What’s the thinking here?” he asked.
“We wait to see if any of the inmates circle back here like I—”
“Captain, that isn’t going to happen, those folks are gone.”
“Probably, but I’d have expected you to be gone about now as well, and yet here you are still. You never know who is going to surprise you. You just never know.”
“Yeah, about that . . .” Emmett started to say, but then didn’t know where to go with it. What exactly did he want here? He didn’t really want to face the future alone. Wiley would probably come with him, but Beast wasn’t exactly the best company. He wished there was a way this could end in which he and Black Jesus rode off into the sunset together as friends. But everything he knew about the man told him that was extremely unlikely. So what the hell did he want to have happen?
“We need to talk” was what Emmett finally said as he kicked the shotgun up to his hands. He didn’t point it at Black Jesus. He hoped he wouldn’t have to. Somewhere in the back of his mind he still hoped they’d end the discussion they were about to have as friends.
Captain Waters looked at the shotgun in Emmett’s hand and shook his head. He deserved whatever was about to come. After all, he’d broken the cardinal rule of inmate management so many times today, it was inevitable that he’d eventually pay the ultimate price for it. He’d started to trust Emmett. How many corrections officers were in the ground because they’d done the same? Hundreds? Probably more, he thought. Without a word, the last of Maine’s prison correction officers unsnapped his holster. But he didn’t raise his gun at Emmett—maybe because Emmett hadn’t raised his at him. Maybe because, just like Emmett, he too hoped that somehow this exchange could end with friendship instead of dead bodies. Maybe because he was just so goddamn tired after keeping this place functional for weeks on end, only to have it all blow up in his face, that lifting his arm was just too much. Maybe it was the fact that he couldn’t escape the utter ridiculousness of killing a convict for escaping, considering the current state of things. Maybe on some deep, dark level he actually wanted Emmett to shoot him. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. As long as the shotgun was not being pointed at him, he planned to keep his own weapon aimed toward the ground.
“I’m disappointed in you, convict,” Black Jesus finally said.
“I get that, but . . .” Emmett started to say, but again found himself unable to decide how to proceed. Black Jesus waited silently with irritatingly calm patience, just staring him down. Inside the prison something exploded, as the fire found footing and began to devour the structure from the inside out. “The prison is gone, Captain. Hell, the whole world as we knew it is gone. Any debt I owed to society has to be gone too, man, because society itself is fucking gone. You get me?”
Their eyes locked. Black Jesus didn’t say anything for what felt like a long, long time. But it was Emmett’s turn to wait a response out, so he stood there in silence as the seconds turned to minutes, until at last the CO relented and spoke.
“Convict, I’m going to need you to put that gun down. I hear that you want to talk things over, and I’m willing to entertain a discussion of some sort considering the state of things at the moment, but I can’t do it with you holding that shotgun.”
“Can’t do it, man. Me having this gun is the only way this talk stays between equals.”
Black Jesus didn’t respond, but he didn’t turn away or shoot him either, so Emmett continued. “I like you a lot, Captain. I admire your commitment to your duty as a corrections officer. I admire the fact that you didn’t just let all of us die. I was willing to go along with your plan to carry out our sentences as long as there was a reasonable expectation that you could uphold your side of that deal. Keep us fed and healthy. Safe. That’s the unspoken contract between prisoners and guards, you know? The inmates give up their freedom in an effort to atone for their sins, and the guards ensure that they survive the ordeal. Good guards, like you, try to safeguard the inmates’ dignity and humanity in the process, while the bad ones try to strip us convicts of everything that separates us from the animals. But regardless, there is a social contract in place that governs our relationship here. Can we at least agree on that?”
Black Jesus did actually agree with that, but he’d been very clear that he was not going to talk with Kessler as long as he was holding the shotgun, so he kept his mouth shut.
“That contract is invalidated the second you can’t uphold your part of it, man. Look around you. The fucking prison is burning to the ground. Half the convicts are dead and the other half have escaped. Food. Water. Protection. Even if it’s just Wiley and me left, do you really think you’re going to be able to provide that with us locked in some cage somewhere? And if you do, where is that cage? You did your duty, man. You did it longer and with more integrity than anybody else working here. You didn’t just leave us locked up to rot, like your colleagues did. You didn’t just let us all suffocate to death when the shit hit the fan either.
“Do you know that we all call you Black Jesus behind your back? Wanna know why? Because you’re just like the messiah, man. You could be counted on to do the right thing. I don’t know if you know how fucking rare that is in prison. Some o
f the guards here were worse than the prisoners, man. But not you. Not Black Jesus.
“So if you can convince me that you can still uphold your side of the social contract between us, as prisoner and guard, I will fucking put this gun down and serve out my sentence as you direct me to. I’ll do it, because my wife’s blood is on my hands and whether I am behind bars or in the wild, my heart will ache the same. My guilt. My shame. My debt. These stay with me, man. They’re the real bars. They’re the real prison.
“On some fucked-up level it’s actually easier to live with what I’ve done with you overseeing my sentence. At least with you it will end, and I know the date that will happen. Without that, then there’s nobody left to tell me it’s okay to move on, you know what I’m saying?
“So, fuck me, Black Jesus, I will serve my sentence out with you if you can honestly carry it out with the same integrity and dignity you’ve had up to this point. But if you can’t, then we need to have a different kind of conversation, you know? Because I like you, man. And in this new fucking world we’re in, it just seems—at least to me—that having a friend with you on your journey is probably a fucking good idea.”
“Put the shotgun down.”
Black Jesus wasn’t going to have a conversation until the gun was no longer in Emmett’s hands. Nothing Emmett said, no matter how much Waters agreed or disagreed with it, was going to change that fact. But the old corrections officer did want to talk. Even if all this was just an act to get him to lower his guard, Emmett did really seem to understand him and to appreciate what he was trying to do. Or had been trying to do—God knows what he was going to do now.
He couldn’t imagine a world where letting a prisoner go free when he didn’t absolutely have to was the right choice, and yet, what was the alternative here? He could kill Emmett and Wiley, he guessed, but that didn’t seem like a particularly righteous move. Killing a prisoner in the middle of an escape attempt may technically be a justifiable discharge of an officer’s service weapon, but it felt like murder under these circumstances. That was unless Emmett gave him no choice, which was a possibility so long as he was holding that goddamn shotgun.
“Kessler. Please don’t give me a reason to put you down, brother,” he said.
“Seriously? You would shoot me in cold blood?”
“Putting you down in self-defense during an escape attempt is hardly in cold blood, inmate.”
“I’m not going to hurt you, Captain.”
“Then put your weapon down.”
“As soon as we come to terms on what this new relationship of ours is, I’m not going to need a weapon anymore. So I’ll put it down then.”
“The only reason for you to have a weapon in your hands is that you intend to do me harm.”
“Look, dude, that is not my intention here, I promise. I just want to have a conversation.”
“Then put the gun down.”
“Goddamn it, man! I am not going to put the gun down. Just fucking shoot me if you have to, but I am not—”
BAM!
Black Jesus moved fast, like a gunslinger. His aim was nowhere near Emmett when he pulled the trigger. But that was intentional; he did not want to shoot the man, just shut him up and motivate him to comply.
“Fuck! Okay. I’ll put it down,” Emmett said and tossed the combat shotgun to the ground.
Bluff. Called.
“Now we can talk about things,” Black Jesus said.
“My fucking ears are ringing.”
Black Jesus looked at him and waited for a second for their ears to recover.
“The question is, can I continue to function as a corrections officer without the resources of the prison? The answer is, I can’t.”
“This is why I needed to have the fucking shotgun, man!”
“Emmett, I honestly don’t know what the right move is here. I can’t just let you and DuPont walk away, but I’m also not willing to use lethal force to keep you from doing so. That said, if you don’t walk away, I don’t know how to uphold my end of the social contract between prisoner and CO you talked about, which, for the record, I do believe in, very much. I am not going to shoot you in the back if you want to leave.”
Emmett couldn’t tell if that meant Black Jesus was letting him go or not. He doubted the captain would ever do something like that. So where did that leave them? He could walk away, but Black Jesus wanted to be sure he felt as guilty as possible about it if he did?
“What I want, man, is to go to Texas and find Dr. Weiss so I can hold him accountable for what he’s done and then find my girls and try to put my life back together.”
Black Jesus sighed and bit back the frustrated and near-hysterical laughter that was building up in his chest. This has to be one of the most ridiculous tête-à-têtes two cats have ever had. And yet he kept talking. “I can’t let you just hurt somebody, Kessler. No matter how we end this conversation. I can’t let you go if I know you’re going to murder somebody. I might not shoot you in the back, but I will stop you if I believe you have criminal intent.”
Emmett took a look around at the dead bodies everywhere and in less than a second, thought of a hundred sassy, sarcastic things to respond with, but he didn’t say any of them. Black Jesus was just trying to do the right thing. Emmett knew it. Hell, he even respected it. The man didn’t need to have his balls broken over the ridiculousness of the situation. He needed a way out of it, and the longer Emmett played antagonist and didn’t help him find one, the more likely this was going to end badly.
Wiley stirred, drawing both men’s attention. The drugs were wearing off. This needed to get wrapped up fast before Beast woke up, or things were going to get a whole lot more complicated (and violent). Looking at a lone pair of handcuffs lying in a puddle of blood next to one of the Rent-a-Cops, Emmett suddenly had a solution.
“Come with me to Austin,” he said. “You can make sure I don’t hurt anybody when I get there—or along the way, for that matter. And, if you’ll agree to allow me to at least confront that bastard Weiss, I’ll stay in your custody, so to speak, for the remainder of my sentence. And I’ll help you with Wiley, so that he doesn’t give you any trouble.”
Black Jesus didn’t think allowing Kessler to go to Texas was a good idea at all, but if he was going to compromise something, that seemed like a small concession in light of everything else. The man had proven himself to be honorable when it counted. Sure, it could just be an act, but he didn’t have an idea he liked better. And this was infinitely better than putting him and DuPont down.
“You’ve got five hundred and eighty-four days remaining, Kessler. DuPont has a life sentence. When I release you from custody at the end of your stretch, you’ll have to give me your word that you’ll stay on with me as a deputy until I can come up with a way to facilitate DuPont’s sentence. You’d be working with me as a free man at that point, of course, so I wouldn’t force you to stay for long, but . . .” Black Jesus sighed and wondered if he would think back to this moment and realize he had been making a deal with the devil as much as he was making one with Kessler. He hoped not, but only time would tell. “If you can promise me that you’ll do that, then I guess we have an understanding.”
“As long as we can spend that time going to Austin and then finding my girls, I am fine with that.”
“Okay, then. Don’t ever call me Black Jesus again.”
“Never to your face, boss,” Emmett said with a smile and headed over to where DuPont was waking up.
Beast was very frightened when he saw the carnage around him and completely discombobulated by the fact that they were outside in the wild, as he kept calling it. The repeated pumping through his bloodstream of the hypersteroid-like super-cocktail of hormones, endorphins, and whatnot—otherwise known as HGF—had caused brain damage well beyond what Emmett and Captain Waters were aware of. But as Black Jesus and Emmett talked him through what had happened and what was going to happen next, Emmett realized the full-grown man’s mind was still in there somewher
e. Maybe there’s a connection between the berserkers and the rampant rise in autism spectrum diagnoses over the last few decades, he thought. Maybe not. Regardless, the poor bastard was terrified in a way Emmett had only witnessed once before, when his own father’s rapid descent into dementia stripped away his familiarity with the people he had nurtured and loved his entire life. It was like he knew he should understand what was happening but just couldn’t, which was what had made it so hard to watch.
“I do that?” Wiley said for the fifteenth time as he noticed once again all the dead around him, like he’d just opened his eyes.
“No, man,” Emmett said. The whole conversation was going to repeat again. Fucking hell, he thought they’d gotten through to him this last time. They should have cleaned up the area before he came to, but who knew the once-human creature was going to freak out like this?
“I in the wild?” he asked Black Jesus.
“No, inmate,” the Captain said softly. “I’m here. I’m your CO. We’re just going to be outside of the facilities for a while. Think of it as extended rec time, yeah?”
“I in the wild . . .” the huge creature said and suddenly started to sob, mumbling, “Oopsie-daisy-doodle-o, I kill ’em, deadie-day-oh,” through his tears.
“Wiley,” Emmett said, touching the monster’s shoulder. “Captain Waters is going to take us on a trip. He isn’t going to let you, or me, hurt anybody. That’s his job, buddy. So as long as he’s with us, you’ll always know that you’re not hurting anybody.”
Black Jesus and Emmett shared a look.
“You’re a good man, Wiley. You just got caught up in some unfortunate circumstances, you know? But I promise you, the captain here, he’s going to make sure you don’t do anything you need to feel bad about, okay? And you know what? I’m going to help him, alright?”
The same speech he’d said before, just different words. Emmett suddenly flashed back to a discussion he’d had with Jennifer before his world had been turned upside down. Back when she was three, or maybe four. Back when Susan was still alive. Before he’d really started drinking. Before he’d shot his wife in the face, failed to file an appeal, and survived being in prison when the end of the world kicked into full swing.
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