by James Gurley
Jake’s Law
A novel by J.E. Gurley
Copyright 2014 by JE Gurley
Jake’s Laws
Aim high; shoot straight
Long noses often get lopped off
A fool and his life are soon parted
Don’t bring home more problems than you left with
In a lawless land, the biggest gun makes the law
Bad people deserve bad ends
Trust yourself first; others seldom
Use the tools you’ve got
Always have an exit strategy
Serve revenge in big doses
Be willing to lose it all
Stay focused
First things first
1
April, 15, 2015 Florence State Prison, Florence, AZ –
The cloying stench of death and the reek of the unwashed dying permeated the air. It clung to his clothing and seeped through the bandana covering his mouth and nose in a failed attempt to stifle the foul odor. A century of death and decay wept from the limestone walls like a miasma, joining this new source of foulness. Levi Coombs fought down the nausea gripping his stomach and grabbed the legs of the body, while Howard ‘Ax’ Axleman wrestled with the corpse’s arms. Together, they flung the corpse onto the cart as they would a bag of manure. The body meant little to either of them. He was a convict like them, and cons meant nothing to anybody, people who society had disaffiliated, dismissed, and discarded. After three years behind bars, Levi had lost all respect for his fellow man and his fellow inmates. He had seen the worst society had to offer, all crammed onto a few acres tucked away out of sight behind high walls and razor wire, guarded by men with guns.
“Whew! He’s ripe,” Ax commented, wiping his hands on his pants and wrinkling his nose beneath his handkerchief mask.
“He didn’t smell much better alive,” Levi said. “Bastard’s farts stank up the entire cell block.”
Ax chuckled. “Yeah, Andrews was a piece of shit, all right. Still, it’s a nasty way to go.” He paused before glancing up at Levi. His brown eyes peering over his handkerchief looked troubled. “He might be the lucky one.”
Levi glanced down at the corpse. The raw, ragged wound in Andrews’ neck where a Staggerer had ripped out a fist-sized chunk of flesh might have killed him, but he was a dead man anyway. Like most of the population, Andrews had the Staggers, coughing up his lungs and crying like a child for his dead momma. The neat round bullet hole in his head had been added shortly after death by one of the few remaining guards to prevent Andrews from turning zombie like the others.
“None of us are getting out of here alive,” Levi said. “The guards had rather see us dead than outside roaming free.”
As they rolled the cart down the corridor, the squeaky wheels created ghostly echoes reflecting from the walls in the nearly deserted cell block, sounding like the moans of the dead. A few residents peered warily through their unlocked cell doors but elected to remain inside, choosing the relative safety of their cells over the freedom of movement. Just outside the cell block door, they dumped Andrews’ body unceremoniously onto the growing pile of corpses ripening in the sun, disturbing the flies crawling over the bloated flesh. The flies rose from the corpses in a dark cloud, buzzing obscenely.
Andrews was the last body in Unit 8, at least so far. Death had become so prevalent, so expected, that no one in the unit held out much hope for their chances of survival. Most of them simply waited for their inevitable death. Levi wasn’t that complacent. He wasn’t going to join the pile of cremated corpses.
A guard stood outside holding a red plastic can of gasoline in one hand and a 9 mm Colt Carbine in the other. He eyed the corpses and the two men with equal disdain.
“Stand back,” he yelled, waving the barrel of the Carbine at the two men.
Levi raised his hands as a gesture of submission and stepped back. Ax did the same. Both knew better than to argue with the guards. No one questioned whether a corpse was a Staggerer or a con who had failed to obey a guard’s orders quickly enough. The guard emptied the two-gallon container over the pile of corpses, backed away several yards, and pulled a road flare from his back pocket. From past experience, Levi knew what was coming and retreated to the open door of the Unit 8 cell block. He glanced at the death house next door where legal executions had once taken place. Now, anywhere would suffice. Any execution carried out by a guard was legal. No one questioned their reasoning. No one cared.
The guard struck the flare on the concrete sidewalk and tossed it onto the stack of corpses. With a sudden whoosh, the bodies became a blazing funeral pyre, to be cremated without fanfare or ceremony, simply trash to be disposed of on the rubbish heap. The guard, his duty done, turned and left, walking past several blackened stains on the concrete from previous pyres. He paid no more attention to Levi or to Ax. His fellow guard in the tower at the corner of the wall had them in his sights. To the guards, the two cons were just pieces of meat awaiting disposal.
Levi was used to such callous treatment. When he had arrived at the Florence State Prison in 2012 as a three-time loser, he had been shoved into a cage and quickly forgotten. Living among thieves, murderers, rapists, gang bangers, and drug dealers, he had become as hard and as unyielding as the concrete surrounding him and as sharp as the razor wire running atop the walls. He had fought with guards and with fellow inmates, but mostly he had fought with himself. One thing only had saved him from descending into the dark pit of oblivion – the wild mustangs.
Training and caring for the wild mustangs the Bureau of Land Management brought to the prison had kept him sane. Breaking and riding the feral horses, even in the small dirt enclosure allotted to them, had given him his only taste of freedom, his only contact with a living creature pure and unsullied by man’s dark desires or his need to screw over one another. Now, the mustangs were gone, released when the Staggers hit the state. The authorities had seen to the freedom of the animals but kept the cons inside to die.
Levi didn’t know what the Staggers were, nor did he care. Rumors flew in a prison like toilet paper in a riot. Everyone had his tale to tell. All he knew was that people became sick, died, and came back to life. At first, they stumbled around like drunks, thus the name Staggers, but as time passed, they became fast, deadly killers consuming human flesh. The infirmary was full of the dead and the dying and only one overworked doctor remained on duty. Sick cons remained where they were, and the harried doctor came cell-to-cell checking on them when he could.
The first casualty Levi had witnessed in Unit 8 was Big Moose Callahan in for rape and murder. He fell ill and died within six days, hacking up his lungs like a TB patient. Before they could remove the body, Moose came back to life, attacked a guard, and ate his face. After that, all hell broke loose. The sick were separated from the healthy. Every cough sent men scurrying in the other direction.
Of the almost 4,000 convicts in the Florence State Prison, fewer than three hundred remained. The cons near the end of their sentences, or those deemed safe for early release, had been freed a few months earlier, leaving only the hardcore criminals. Since then, Levi had been attacked twice. He bore a livid scar on this right side where a shiv made from a toothbrush had almost punctured a kidney. The doctor had stopped the bleeding, stitched the wound, and returned him to lockup. Now, he carried a weapon of his own, a sharpened piece of copper tubing ripped from one of the bathroom sinks. Only one person had threatened him since, and his body had been burned with the Stagger victims.
A pall of black smoke, reeking of scorched flesh and gasoline, billowed around his face. He brushed back his long red hair and coughed. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he told Ax.
Ax rolled his eyes. “Sure
. Why don’t you just ask a bull for the key?” he said, hitching his thumb at the retreating guard.
Ax’s sarcasm annoyed Levi, but he let it slide. “I have a better idea,” he said, his blue eyes twinkling.
Ax stared at him. “What?”
Levi shook his head. The best secret was the one only one person knew. “I’ll show you tonight in the cafeteria.”
He paced his small cell the remainder of the afternoon. The door wasn’t locked. He could have walked the length of the entire cell block if he wished, or wandered onto the yard. The remaining cons could now come and go as they pleased within the confines of the prison, but few chose that option. The guards were trigger happy, and one stumble could turn a fall into death sentence. One cough could invite a bullet to the head. Having a barred metal door to shut if someone turned zombie was another reason most remained indoors.
That evening, in the much shorter than usual chow line, Levi took his place behind a con named McHugh, a great hulk of a man with a nasty disposition and a reputation for hurting people for pleasure. He didn’t like McHugh, and McHugh didn’t like anyone. He was taking a chance getting so near the quick-tempered con, but tonight the risk was worth it. As they shuffled down the food line, McHugh loaded his tray with double helpings of everything, growling his displeasure at the hapless servers who cowered from him. Levi placed nothing on his tray. His stomach still reeled from the stench of the dead. He remained close behind McHugh, following him down the serving line. As they neared a table, Levi raised his empty tray, slammed the corner of it into the back of McHugh’s head with all his might, and then shoved the stunned man forward into the space between tables. McHugh, dazed by the unexpected blow, dropped his heaping tray of food and stumbled around groaning, banging into tables and reaching out blindly to maintain his balance.
“Staggerer!” Levi shouted at the top of his lungs and pointed at McHugh.
Other frightened voices immediately took up the yell. Cons scattered like frightened children as the guards closed in, shoving their way through the throng like bulldozers, swinging wooden truncheons at random heads too slow to move out of their way. Levi grabbed a confused Ax by the arm and yanked him along; joining one group huddled near the kitchen door. McHugh recovered enough sense to realize what had happened. He searched the room for his attacker. As his gaze fell on Levi, he raised his hand, pointed, and growled in rage. As he did, his head exploded, disintegrating from a flurry of bullets from frightened guards standing on walkways above the mess hall floor. Brains and blood sprayed the floor, the tables, plates of abandoned food, and the nearby cons. Men panicked. A melee ensued, as men scurried away from the gore, afraid the disease was spread by blood.
Mouthing a silent thanks to McHugh for his unintended aid, Levi and Ax eased through the kitchen door unnoticed. The cooks and cook’s helpers were staring at the turmoil on the floor and paid little attention to them, as they slipped into one of the trash bins.
They waited for hours in the filthy bin, buried beneath scraps of food, potato peelings, and empty cans. The smell was nauseating, but not as bad as the burning bodies. Eventually, as Levi knew they would, the workers rolled the full trash bins to the incinerator room where trash was ground into small bits before being burned. As he hoped, with the shortage of guards, they were allowing the trash to build up before separating the recyclables from the burnable trash, if they still bothered with such petty details in a world no longer concerned with environmental issues. After the workers hauling the trash and the single guard accompanying them left, he and Ax slipped out of the bins.
Covered in food scraps, Ax looked around the room, his hands on his hips. “What now?” he asked.
Levi brushed a dried crust of mashed potatoes from his shirt and pointed up at the smokestack rising from the incinerator dominating the center of the room. A conveyor belt ran across the room, ending in the massive jaws of the grinder, last step before the incinerator. When active, the incinerator burned trash at temperatures of over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. A series of recovery systems trapped and scrubbed harmful flue gases of their toxic chemicals. The system rarely worked as efficiently as the EPA required, but it was easier to pay the fines than to repair the unit. One benefit of the system was that the waste heat provided hot water for the showers. Now, it was silent.
“We climb out there,” he said.
“Are you crazy?” Ax replied. “We’ll fry.”
Levi smiled. “Relax. The incinerator is off. We can stand a little heat. There’s a maintenance ladder inside. Once we’re outside, another ladder will take us back down to the roof. From there, it’s a hop, skip, and a jump over the wall.”
Ax eyed the incinerator with trepidation. “What if they decide to start it up?”
He chuckled. “Then, my friend, we die a horrible death.”
After using a metal rod to pry open the small maintenance door used to remove ash from the incinerator, and wriggling his way through the tiny opening, Levi stood inside the narrow chimney and stared at the small circle of moonlight above him. It represented freedom. Ax, groaning and bitching, forced his bulk through the small opening and stood inside the smokestack.
“Christ Almighty, it’s hot in here,” he said, wiping sweat from his brow with his hand.
“And you say you’re from Arizona,” Levi chided.
The heat from the idle burners was stifling, not hot enough to kill, but enough to discourage them from spending any more time inside than necessary. He didn’t see the need to inform Ax that he had tripped a sensor when he had opened the incinerator door. It was unlikely any guards were monitoring the trash room, but if so, they would likely be shot dead before they made it to the wall. Once outside the walls and a decent distance away, they would be safe. Too many cons had died during the plague for the guards to expend time and energy chasing down and re-capturing escapees.
He climbed up the narrow ladder first with Ax following closely behind him. The rungs were hot, but his hands had become tough from roping and breaking wild mustangs. The heat didn’t bother him. It was barely as hot as Yuma on a midsummer’s day. He closed his eyes as he climbed and imagined the feel of cool free air on his face. However, Ax had been an accountant before accidently killing his client during an argument over dubious money movements. His hands were soft as a baby’s ass.
Ax seemed a strange companion for a prison break. He had no skills. He was lousy in a fight. Levi had taken pity on him one day when two cons started shoving him around. He had given Howard the nickname ‘Ax’ to make him at least sound tougher than he was. He wasn’t a friend. Levi had no friends. The only thing Ax could offer Levi was the ability to watch his back after they escaped. He couldn’t stay awake twenty-four hours a day and he didn’t want to wake up with a Staggerer munching on his leg. There was no one else in the prison he could trust not to slit his throat in his sleep.
Ax’s constant stream of complaints as they climbed grated on Levi’s nerves. “Shut the hell up,” he finally shouted down to his reluctant companion, “and climb.”
At the top of the smokestack, he peered over the edge. Only two of the guard towers were manned full time, both at opposite ends of the yard, the reason he had chosen this particular spot to make his escape. The tower nearest them was manned only occasionally. He couldn’t see anyone in it, but no lights didn’t mean no guard. The searchlights from the other two towers swept the walls at roughly five minute intervals, just long enough to climb the wall and get over the top. If the dark tower was manned, or if they took too long to scale the wall, they would be shot. It was a risk he was willing to take. Remaining inside was quickly becoming a death sentence.
They descended the smokestack to the roof, lay flat while the searchlights passed over them, and then shimmied down a drainpipe to the ground. Moving in the shadows as much as possible, they made their way to a small metal tool shed near the east wall. The shed was locked, but that didn’t matter to Levi. He had made other arrangements.
“How
are we going to get over the wall?” Ax asked. His gaze followed the twin searchlight beams as they swept along the walls and the courtyard.
Levi had meticulously planned his escape. To answer his companion’s question, he produced a length of old fire hose from beneath a pile of depleted fire extinguishers awaiting refills. A two-barb hook he had fashioned from copper pipe had been shoved down the mouth of the nozzle to make a crude grappling hook.
“With this. I made sure I was on the fire extinguisher detail. We hook the wire on the wall and climb up.”
“We’ll be cut to shreds,” Ax moaned. “Besides, the wire’s electrified.”
Levi grinned and pulled a roll of copper wire from his pants pocket. Tied in a loop at one end serving as weight were several half-inch steel nuts he had been surreptitiously removing from the garage for weeks. He threw back a dusty tarp to reveal a rolled up and discarded bunk mattress. He had spent three weeks stealing small snips of copper wire and secreting the other items near the shed. All he had needed to set his plan in motion was help from the hapless McHugh.
“We short out the fence and lay the mattress over the wire.”
Ax frowned. “Why didn’t you tell me about all this?”
“Because you’ve got a big mouth. Now, come on.”
When the searchlights had reached the far end of the yard, the two rushed across the open space and hugged the shadow of the wall. Levi attached one end of the copper wire to a metal drainpipe and flung the heavy, weighted end over the razor wire, releasing his grip before it touched the wire. Sparks flew as the wire shorted. The searchlights went dark as the fuses blew. Quickly, he stepped away from the wall and twirled the fire hose to gain momentum. Then he tossed it up and over the coiled razor wire. On his first attempt, it fell short. The barb caught on the lip of the wall. It took him several heart-stopping moments to free the hose and try again. He sighed with relief as it snagged the wire on his second toss. He handed one end of the hose to Ax.