Early Release
Page 1
Early Release
By Jason Michelsen
Copyright 2015 by Jason Michelsen.
All rights reserved.
1
If hell had a riot, this is what it would look like.
David Saul could not contain his existential and possibly melodramatic thoughts as dark smoke billowed down the hall in C-Unit--or what was left of it. Most of the second tier walkway was now rubble strewn across the common area. Mattresses and bedclothes still burned in scattered cells up and down the ground floor, casting demonic shadows over stalagmites of concrete and steel. Only the smell of brimstone was missing, and it was a matter of personal preference whether or not it would be preferred to the present odor of blood and charred flesh. Cages designed to contain some of the country's greatest evils were blasted apart like Lucifer himself had led the jailbreak. Given the circumstances, that scenario would have made as much sense as anything else.
But evil minions were not David's concern as he eased his way through the debris. While he wasn't foolish enough to trivialize the threat some of his fellow inmates posed, he was more concerned with those who had overcome their criminal tendencies. Some of those old-timers had mentored him; taken him in when he felt abandoned by society. After the events of the past couple hours, or days--it was tough to tell--he owed it to them to see if they were alright. So far, three dead friends offered a resounding "no" to that question. Even more disturbing was the fact that only two of those looked like they were killed in the collapse. One throat was slit too neatly to be an act of nature. The idea that someone was reverting to their sociopathic nature was not the least bit surprising, but their target certainly was.
Ray "Creepy" Brin was as universally liked as a man could be after killing an elderly couple in a home invasion. That had been over twenty years ago, but Creepy would be the first to tell you that forgetting what you did to get here was the easiest way to earn a trip back. While he would never put the brutal murder out of his mind, Creepy was a changed man since his arrest. His nickname referred to the penetrating eyes that looked as if they could read your confession before you were coerced into giving it, not the violent nature of his past. He was a friend to anyone who needed one in this place, and his kind words had kept many prisoners from taking the easy way out with a sheet around their necks.
For David, suicide had never been an option, but it was still Creepy's words that kept him breathing. After being "welcomed" into the federal system his first week on the compound, David was preparing for revenge when the old man rapped on his wall.
"In their own way, those guys were trying to offer you friendship -- or at least their idea of it -- out there." The gentle voice was infuriatingly out of place in a living hell. David didn't even look up from his bunk. "But I suppose that look in your eye means you don't accept. Can't say I blame you, you don't look to be the affiliated sort. Makes me wonder though: if you were to go back and start a war with your own race, who's going to be on your side?"
Maybe it was the lack of sleep, maybe it was the rage at the system that took him from valiant hero to helpless victim. Maybe it was the plain and simple logic in the words. Whatever it was, David shot to his feet ready to choke the life out of the old man. But then he saw the eyes....
"Easy now, maybe you should count to ten?" chided the old man with the hardest, most guilt-wracked eyes he had ever seen.
Without a word, David climbed back into his rack while the old man strolled away like he didn't have a care in the world. Was he humming?
David shook his head, chastising himself for allowing memories to steal away his attention from the dangerous situation he presently faced. No, Creepy would definitely not provoke the savagery that took his life.
Coming to the last cell in the block, he was filled with trepidation at what he suspected he would find. Peering cautiously around the corner, the still legs and torso seemed to confirm his worst fears. David fought back the flashbacks and their constant striving to change these prison walls into those he felt pressing in on him in a desert half a world away. In that place he had not found any survivors, and bodies like this were all too common. Here he could not afford to give in to that despair again.
Sliding over the second tier railing, which had collapsed to nearly block the doorway, David moved toward the back of the cell for confirmation of his friend's face. He learned two things when he cleared the mattress off the upper body: First, his "worst fears" were painfully lacking in visceral detail; and second, facial recognition would not be possible.
2
Across the compound, a small crowd gathered around Lieutenant Eva Garcia. Tension boiled throughout the room as the mob remained uncharacteristically still, awaiting some undetermined signal from the tall man at their center. While the flames flickered over most eyes, the light only seemed to deepen the blackness in the leader's. He possessed a gaze that Medusa would fear to meet, and Garcia could not even raise her head in his direction. In the space of an instant, one side of his lip curved up into a sadistic leer; a mob of depraved criminals too long repressed let out a collective roar of lust; and Lieutenant Garcia's mind broke with only a whimper.
One man didn't join the crowd. His eyes flickered from the leader to the ground; back and forth like the pendulum of a grandfather clock swinging its way toward the witching hour. He could not bear to witness this atrocity, yet he still yearned for the approval of the man with the black eyes and a blacker soul. Unconsciously, his left hand twitched toward an amulet hanging from his neck, and toward the forgotten life it represented.
3
David allowed himself only moments to grieve. Four men who had been so much more than mentors were dead, two murdered in a particularly gruesome fashion. The fact that these friends had made their peace with God was little comfort in the face of such gore, and he barely stopped himself from cursing that God for allowing such a gross injustice. Wiping a single tear from his eye, David steeled himself for one final task; one last search.
Screams filled the air and the ex-soldier instinctively dropped behind the rubble, taking cover as he judged the direction and distance of the noise. There were many voices together -- strange considering the politics that ruled the inmate population -- and they sounded animalistic in their cry, like a pack of wolves finding a fat deer after a long season of hunger. Chills traveled his spine at the sound, but in his estimation, the pack was not in any danger of running into him -- or vice versa -- as he set out after his last target.
Back through C-Unit he raced, down the main corridor, and into the F block; David was rerouted by impassable terrain no less than three times. It had to have been almost an hour by the time he reached the cell he was looking for.
Empty.
David was inexplicably concerned by this fact. The man he was now looking for was the first one he had not found dead. In most cases, this would be cause for celebration. Adam, however, was not the mature, stable, and strong-willed inmate that the others had been. This youngster had a bad habit of taking himself out of bad situations by leaping squarely into the middle of worse ones. Remembering the hellish cacophony of an hour ago, David's mind made an intuitive leap that terrified him.
There are some words that the English language includes only to express feelings of rage and frustration so strong they are no longer acceptable in civilized company. In that moment, David Saul uttered every one of them.
4
Adam watched as Lieutenant Garcia was finally executed. After what he had just watched her endure, the killing blow was undoubtedly a merciful gesture. His left hand had taken a firm grip on the cross around his neck, but his right was balled into a tight fist; his body displayed the same schizophrenic emotions his mind wrestled with.
"Why don't you jus
t take that thing off?"
The silky smooth voice snapped him out of his own head and back to the reality of the situation. When the man they called Prophet spoke, you would do well to listen closely.
"I've watched you play with the damn thing for the past twenty minutes, why not just rip it off and be free already?" continued the subtle Texan drawl.
"Free?" Adam asked with a tremor in his voice.
Prophet smiled slightly, a patient father explaining the basics of manhood to a wayward son. Even with his impossibly black eyes, the man could give a kind look to rival any saint.
The Prophet turned slightly to face the entire group, ensuring that he had their rapt attention. Only when each of the men surrounding him had devoted themselves fully to listening did he speak:
"All our lives, my friends, we have been told to adhere to a strict moral code. Don't kill, don't rape, don't steal; basically don't have any fun, right? But why? Who was it that decided they could judge us? Why shouldn't we judge their compassion and honesty against our standards? Why do we, as the strong ones unbound by foolish ideals, subjugate ourselves to the weak-willed?
"I'll tell you why. Because of symbols. Because of crosses and crescent moons; stars and stonehenge. Because of religion. Boys, verily I tell you: Jesus and Muhammed and Moses were slavers! They imposed their moral code on humanity and imprisoned us in our own minds as completely as any walls and bars ever did!
"Think about this, I want you to make up your own minds. When human technology advances, it should free us. But the religious folks step in and denounce us for using it. It used to be that if you knocked a girl up, you were stuck with her for life. One fun night turns into decades of domestic agony trying to fulfill the demands of a screaming brat and a nagging wife that you wouldn't have touched if you hadn't just killed off an entire bottle of your old man's whiskey! Now, for a couple hundred bucks, you can go on with your life in peace. You drop her off at the clinic, and move on with your life. Hell, you don't even have to go back and pick her up, she has no claim on you anymore! Then the pro-life crowd shows up and calls you a baby-killer. You have to fight through a mass of protesters just to leave her there. Then they get their dirty, guilt-stained hands all over your shiny new car, and they even complain when you run over a few toes on your way out of the crowd. Is that really what scientific advances are supposed to bring us?
"How many of you are here because science developed a way to make certain substances addictive and intoxicating? That was done in labs, not in the projects. But when it got to the projects, when you figured out a way to make a living out of supplying it to people who desperately wanted it, it became bad. Why? Again, because the churches and moralists said it was. People who profess to drink blood and eat flesh suddenly have a problem with your use of refined chemical substances. They want us to go back to blind subservience and mind-numbing sobriety."
The crowd was riled up now, murmurs of agreement rippled through it without restraint. Prophet turned and spoke directly to Adam again.
"Religion is a band-aid, son, applied to staunch the flow of freedom from our veins. You can remove it slowly and painfully, or you can rip it off and be free!"
Entranced now, Adam reached up and tore the cross from his neck. He stood tall in front of the men, holding the necklace out for the entire crowd to see. Then, with firelight dancing lewdly in his maniacal eyes, he flung it at the mutilated corpse of Lieutenant Eva Garcia.
5
David ran across the compound as fast as the wreckage would allow. He had not seen another living soul since digging himself out of his cell, and there was a growing desperation in his quest to find Adam. To save Adam. Since finding that cell empty, a sick feeling had grown in the pit of his stomach.
Adam had been lost when he arrived six months ago. Young and outwardly sure of himself, he reeked of insecurity and fear to the old Staff Sergeant Saul side of David. There was something different about this kid from South Jersey, though. He obviously wasn't buying into the white power crap he pretended he was, but that wasn't unusual in the system. Lack of control and oversight by the warden and his cronies meant that new inmates had to take shelter where they could -- get in where they fit in, so to speak -- even if that meant faking a bit of bigotry. No, Adam was different from the rest. After maneuvering into a few opportunities to talk with him, David was impressed with his sharp mind, and even more so by the decent heart he couldn't quite hide. Unfortunately, his lack of self-confidence and direction led the young man to a life of stupid stunts to impress stupid people. Stunts like that have a strange tendency to institutionalize people, be it in a prison or a hospital.
After a string of bank robberies landed him on the unit, more of his confused antics had him constantly on the verge of beatings--or worse--by every race, including his own. After his assignment as an orderly with David, though, things started to change. The same confidence and straightforward demeanor that made Soldiers trust him quickly drew the kid in. Before long, David was a mentor again, reaching Adam much the way he himself had been influenced by Creepy Brin. Once Adam learned to accept responsibility for his life and see hope for his future, things were looking up.
Enter the Prophet.
A twisted man if there ever was one, Prophet was something of an icon in the prison. Imposing at 6'4" and 240 pounds, the man could push bad ideas like they were free heroin in a methadone clinic. When your neighborhood devil can alternate between paralyzing glares of intimidation and used car salesman smiles with equal effectiveness, the good guys have their work cut out for them.
Adam, like most in the institution, was enamored with the lore of the Prophet. So when the psychopath invited the young man to join him for dinner one day, David knew his life was about to get interesting. Now, half a year later, he climbed through the wreckage in search of that same young man and knew he had not been wrong.
Stopping again to listen for signs of the crowd he stalked, David tried to place where the noise had come from the first time he had heard it. It was toward the front -- maybe visitation? That made sense if the mob was trying to find an exit, which it presumably was. Despite the severe structural damage that could have opened an escape route anywhere, human nature would still be to try the front door first. Human nature was something most convicts did not lack.
Without further clues floating through the air, he set off for the visitation area. Every minute he spent chasing Adam was another minute for the youngster to find himself in deeper trouble. Then, of course, David would be the one who had to bail him out. He picked up his pace.
6
Everything in Adam's body wanted to empty his stomach, but his mind remained fixed on pleasing the Prophet. So far he had managed to avoid direct participation in the bloody massacre, although the images were still burned into his head with disturbing detail. With some clever rationalization -- something Adam had always excelled at -- keeping his hands bloodless was enough to keep his waning conscience clean. Thankfully, none of the other victims had taken the time that Garcia had. Prophet seemed to have changed his focus from fight to flight; from extermination of jailers to escaping the jail. The most recent murders were quick and clean, the group barely slowing to slit throats and moving on before the bodies hit the cracked tile floor.
When the gang reached the main entrance, they found a jagged wall of concrete blocking their path, as if even in its destruction the prison gave everything it had to fulfill its purpose. What was formerly a respectable looking atrium complete with potted plants and pictures of what the prison facilities looked like in a better economy had become a morgue of broken lies and shattered illusions. No more families would come through here and believe that their fathers and sons were being comfortably rehabilitated.
Turning back, the Prophet led them past their earlier victims and toward the recreation yard. The chances of those walls being intact were slim, and assuming the guard towers were unmanned, the massive asphalt playground was their expressway to freedom.
David reached visitation and knew immediately that something was wrong. Pieces of a bloodstained corrections uniform were scattered over the lobby; he dreaded the idea of going further into the room. The visiting room was big enough to fit 300 felons and families uncomfortably, and its style was reminiscent of a cross between his high school cafeteria and an airport gate lounge. One entrance was for visitors and sat near a large horseshoe shaped watchdesk--currently broken and burning--while the other was for inmates and had no impressive furniture to speak of. He mentally prepared himself for the carnage he expected, and advanced through the half-collapsed doorframe into the room.
First into view around the toppled table in the center of the room were the legs. They were toned, the color of caramel and looked just as smooth; David probably would have stopped to admire them in most situations. This was not most situations, and admiration was not the reason he froze. Dark crimson speckled the limbs and pooled underneath them, testing the iron stomach that three combat tours had forged in him. He took a deep breath through his mouth and continued around the table. When the body was revealed, David recognized the same savagery that took his friends lives, and then some. Mutilation was an understatement for what had occurred here, and the bloodletting was probably the kindest of the abuses. Desperate to center himself, he grabbed the closest pieces of uniform and arranged them in a futile attempt to preserve her modesty. He recognized the young lieutenant, and although she had never been overly kind to the inmates, she had always been fair. In this system, that was normally the best one could hope for.
Reaching to close her eyes in final rest, his hand brushed a cord hidden against her long ebony hair. Initially he assumed the braided leather was just one of the pretty woman's hair accessories, but his breath caught when he lifted it and recognized the wooden cross hanging before him.