Made in the U.S.A.: The 10th Anniversary Edition

by Jack X. McCallum

  Al had spent a lifetime nurturing a very bad opinion of white people, and that little boy had defused all of it with a touch and a child’s clarity.

  He’d seen the massive deadbolts fixed to the outside of each cell door, bolts that would slide home and be immovable from the inside. He could not get out, unless they, whoever they were, came in first. He didn’t know how to precipitate that action though, so he sat on his bunk waiting hour after hour for an inspiration, a sign. When none came and he began to think he was wasting his time, the lower panel in the door slid aside and an arm in black pushed a breakfast tray into the holding room. Christ Almighty, he thought, it’s morning. He realized this might be the chance he was waiting for, and if it wasn’t, it would just have to do. He reached down and grabbed the exposed arm, then stood and pulled as hard as he could.

  There was a dull thud as the head of the man in Al’s grip slammed against the door, and Al could hear shouts through the narrow portal.

  Realizing he had to get them to open the door in a rush before anyone on the other side could think of a safe way to neutralize him, Al began breaking the trembling fingers on the end of the arm. The bones snapped like pretzels in Al’s unyielding grip. On the other side of the door the man started screaming and thrashing about. Remembering the assortment of pejoratives tossed his way in the last few hours and well aware that every guard he had seen looked like a peckerwood, Al let out his deepest bull-like bellow and cried, “Ah’s gone break all this mutha’s fingahs and then ah’m gone rip this heah drumstick off an’ eat me some whitemeat!”

  Damn, Al thought, I can’t believe I said that. He gave the arm another pull, eliciting another scream. These guys would have to be dumber than dirt to fall for that.

  “Gas the fucker!” a voice yelled. “That room’s rigged for it!”

  Another replied, “No time! He’s gonna rip Chaney’s arm off!”

  Al was almost disappointed when the door slammed open and four big white boys surged into the room. They hit the door with such force that Al lost his grip on the mangled hand and was knocked back onto the bed. The unfortunate Chaney was dragged halfway into the room screaming. Crushed between door and wall, the bones in his arm shattered in a flurry of wet cracks and Chaney passed out.

  Al’s attention was focused on two Tasers aimed at him; stun guns would require close contact and the men holding the Tasers that delivered a shock from a distance through barbed electrodes on launched wires didn’t want to get too close. Behind the men with the Tasers were two men armed with automatic pistols. Al reached for the bunk.

  A Taser fired and he blocked the shot; the current-bearing wire buried itself in a pillow he was holding. Al felt nothing and kicked the first man’s feet out from under him.

  The second Taser was pointed at his head. He stepped close and chopped upward at the man’s wrist with the edge of one hand, driving the nose of the Taser up. The idiot holding the Taser must have squeezed the trigger button when Al hit him. It was an exceptional shot. The load-bearing wire was launched from the Taser with a zing. Somehow it passed through the ceiling-mounted wire cage around the single light in the room. It shattered the bulb and a surge of current went back down the wire into the Taser. The plastic body of the weapon exploded, and so did the hand that was holding it.

  A shot was fired, but Al’s head was no longer where the guard was aiming. In the near dark Al hunkered down, sliding off the bed and letting his ass bear all of his two hundred and twenty pounds as it slammed onto the face of the man he had tripped up seconds before. Al grabbed the trousers of the man with the shattered hand, spinning him around and thrusting him at the two men with pistols.

  Someone cried, “Not him!”

  There was a gunshot even as another man yelled “Ahh shit!” and the man with the shattered hand went down.

  Now there were two bodies squirming around on the floor in the dark, three if you counted the twitching Chaney. The two gunmen who were still standing were jerking about like marionettes, the two-handed grips on their weapons darting from one figure to another; they were spooked by their own shadows cast by the light in the hall behind them. One of the men grunted and felt as if a wrecking ball had just slammed into his testicles. He sank to his knees, and as the boot that had caught him in the sack reared back and slammed into his face he felt his weapon yanked out of his grip.

  Al had little trouble sighting on the only man still on his feet. He took aim and blew the man’s knees apart as easily as shooting rotten apples off a fence post.

  The men monitoring Al’s cell were slow to scramble more guards. When the light went out and they heard screams and gunshots, they were convinced that the cop had been subdued. The cell camera’s automatically activated night vision mode captured an indistinct cluster of struggling figures. It wasn’t until another camera showed Al loping down the hallway alone that they hit the intruder alarm.

  * * *

  Galderson looked at his finger, curious. He hadn’t actually touched the intercom button or issued any orders, but he could hear the steady waa-waa-waa that was calling every employee to their station and pulling every relaxing guard back on duty.

  He punched in a code on his keyboard, accessing a view of the location that had sounded the alarm. When he saw the big black cop racing down a corridor, guns in hand, Galderson felt the beginnings of a headache.

  * * *

  Al paused halfway down the hall. In one direction were stairs going up. In the other were stairs going down. There were eight heavy metal cell doors in this corridor, including the one he had just stepped through. All of them were open on empty rooms but one. The door was held fast with two blue steel bolts as thick as his arm. He shot the bolts back and opened the door. The kid in the cook’s whites was lying on the bed.

  Carlos cracked an eye. “Huh?”

  “I think it’s time to try and find a way out of here,” Al said. He looked back the way he had come. The lacerations on his head had opened up again and being a scalp wound the drab Government Issue linoleum on the floor was spattered with drops of red. “Damn,” he said, “I’m leaving a trail. We’ve got to get a move on.”

  He hesitated, and then handed the kid one of the two automatic pistols. “Know how to use one of these?” The kid nodded. “Okay. Anybody ever asks, you found it lying around, and I never knew you had it until you used it, if you have to use it.”

  “And if we get out of here,” Carlos added.

  “Yeah,” Al agreed grimly. “Let’s roll.”

  They went down the hall, toward the stairs going up.

  * * *

  Galderson got on the radio to the squad sent to grab the kid and the cop. “Bottle them in on the stairs,” he said. That done, he checked in on the infirmary. When he saw what was going on he scrambled more of his finite supply of guards to the small hospital, wishing he hadn’t sent so many outside to keep an eye on the geologists near Big Blue Rock. This was a secret installation, as secure as the Pentagon. If access within a perimeter was severely limited, how large a force did one need to police the insides of that perimeter? He felt like he was going to find out. It was bad enough that they had been operating with a skeleton staff in anticipation of the big end of the millennium celebrations. Clinton and his goddamn budget cuts! He’d told old man Kraft again and again that they were understaffed, but the XD wouldn’t give Galderson one penny more in the last review of the security budget. If this kept up Galderson was going to have to start handing out firearms to the fucking custodial staff.

  * * *

  Tupper was following Doctor Mondani, his immediate superior and the Director of Scientific Research at the Compound, as the DSR did his daily rounds. Both men preferred this installation over the aging sprawl of the older Compound on the East Coast. Compound West’s small size, intimacy and Mojave location had made it a pleasant and welcome change. “And no more damnable winter,” Mondani had said, when he first arrived in the desert years ago.

  They were in one of the ma
ny sub-levels under Big Blue Rock. Dormitory 7 was a combination of living quarters, educational facilities, and recreational areas informally known as Schoolhouse West. There were three infants and five young children aged three to seven in residence at the Schoolhouse. All of them were clones, as were the dozens of stored frozen fetuses which Mondani, thinking he was being clever, had dubbed les enfants glacés. Tupper often wished he could access Mondani’s carefully guarded list of source material, which his mentor referred to as his clone book. Tupper knew Mondani had agreed to abide by the Clinton/Kennedy clean-up orders only as a way to remove the ever-present threat that Ms. Norman or Mr. Hill might talk. The children in Schoolhouse West were allowed to live because they were fully under Mondani’s control. He was a father figure to them, not one of the many remote and oppressive Compound employees who had cared for Hill and Norman as they had been growing up.

  Tupper felt his silenced beeper vibrate in his pocket and took a discreet peek at the message; Trouble in infirmary–Norman & Hill. He was thrilled. Could they be trying to make a break already? Tupper cleared the message and slipped the beeper into his pocket, grateful that Mondani refused to carry one. He wanted to keep Mondani in the dark as long as possible. He knew that Will and Jeannie would need every chance they could get to escape Compound West. Mondani might show occasional despotic tendencies and his ego was as big as Big Blue Rock , but he was the smartest man Tupper had ever met; the longer he was out of the loop, the better.

  * * *

  Betsy wasn’t aware that she was barefoot and wearing nothing but a hospital gown like the one doing such a poor job of covering up the bitch-mother until her feet touched the cool linoleum of the infirmary floor. She pushed away from the bed and took three steps, and then some chick in white pajamas was grabbing her arm. Betsy glared at the woman holding her back, thinking she looked a lot like that Italian actress, Sophia whatever, the one with the huge tits.

  Just climbing out of bed and grabbing this teeny-bopper with the vaguely familiar face caused a jolt of pain that rippled across Stella’s chest and made her restraining hold become a stabilizing grip. She’d seen the way the young woman’s eyes had flashed once they’d lighted on Jeannie Norman. She knew that look because it had been on her own face many times before. She wasn’t going to let this kid get in on her action. She’d been mutilated for Christ’s sake! Miss Perfect Teeth had chewed her nipple off and would pay for that mistake, but first Stella had to get this kid out of the way.

  “I’ll rip that arm clean off if you don’t let go of me,” Betsy growled. She struggled, but she wasn’t as strong as she thought. Her anger was energizing her, yet under that anger was a deep and frightening fatigue that weakened her with every breath.

  Stella was confused. Maybe the painkillers she’d taken were fogging her mind as much as they were slowing her down. The girl in front of her looked more than familiar now. Stella was sure she had seen that face recently; those beautiful features twisted by rage into a visage that created an instant flicker of fear. She’d never seen this girl before but she seemed to recall wanting to fuck her and throttle her at the same time. Maybe if she just stuck to Tylenol for the pain from now on her mind would clear the fuck up.

  Betsy could feel her energy draining. She pried the fingers away from her arm and gave the broad who looked as hard as nails a shove. Both of them were swaying on their feet.

  * * *

  Dicks stood up, feeling like a fool in the cotton pajamas he’d been issued. He steadied himself against the end of his bed and stared at Jeannie in wonder. All the pain he had suffered and all the pain he had yet to experience in reconstructive and orthodontic surgery was thanks to this woman. Jesus! It would do a whole hell of a lot for his self-esteem if he could give her one good shot to the face and break up the perfect lines of her nose, or maybe knock out a few of those flawless pearly-white teeth. Fuck it, maybe he’d just bite her on that incredible, edible ass, leave his teeth marks in her flesh like a tattoo on one of those ripe round cheeks. Dicks’ mind was filled with alarming visions of humping and killing. It was making him dizzy.

  * * *

  Richards opened his eyes. He turned his head and saw Dicks standing on the other side of a dark-haired woman. They were wearing matching pajamas. The woman was clutching her chest with both hands and Richards could have sworn he heard her whisper something about her nipple. Dicks was wearing white PJs that did a poor job of hiding an obvious erection. Hurting everywhere, Richards hoped this was all just some fucked up dream.

  * * *

  Kraft had seen Jeannie Norman in the flesh twice before. Once when she was a newborn. It had been a big event for him, the first human clone created by his team. He had posed with the squalling infant for a picture that was now in his private collection. Once the flash bulb had ignited and burned out he quickly handed the child to a wet nurse. He found infants of the human species quite repulsive. He saw Jeannie again a few years later, just months before Eicher spirited her away, and he had thought she was an unremarkable and uninspiring child. It was impossible to equate the infant and the little girl with the spectacular woman stepping down off the scales at the far end of the infirmary. He sucked oxygen and caught the eye of one of the two personal bodyguards here with him. The bodyguard bent low.

  “Bring her to me,” Kraft wheezed, one shaking, knobby finger thrust in Jeannie’s direction. “I want to see her better.”

  * * *

  Johnny shook his head. The medical assistant who was trying to treat him cursed as a few layers of carefully wrapped gauze drifted down around the old man’s bony shoulders. Johnny was trying to remember the silvery, wiggly woman. She had been nice, and smelled real good, and she used to kiss him; he had liked that a lot! He couldn’t recall much else, but he was left with the trace of a memory. He had done something to make her sad. He’d been bad! How could a guy be so lousy? How could any guy meet a lady as pretty as that, someone who was even prettier when she smiled, and then be a mean green bean and make her so sad that she stopped smiling and ended up naked and dead in her messy bedroom with pill bottles everywhere?

  As Bobby had pointed out, the heavies they hired in Hollywood had fucked up. What the Kennedy’s hoped would be another suicide attempt, yet another of Marilyn’s staged calls for help that hopefully would result in her being committed again, became a fatal goddamned overdose. Worse yet, the hired assassins hadn’t known Monroe’s doctor had just refilled her prescription for Nembutal, so she had a lot of yellow jackets on hand and those were supposed to be the pills that would kill her. The clowns working for the Kennedys had OD’d Monroe with an enema of pentobarbital and chloral hydrate instead of forcing her own pills down her throat, forgetting that the Nembutal capsules she was supposed to have swallowed in her suicide attempt got their name from a dyed gelatin exterior that stained the digestive tract yellow. In trying to avoid leaving any obvious marks on her body the assassins had blown it, and the Kennedy brothers nearly blew a shitter when they heard the news. Despite a misguided lust for publicity, Thomas Noguchi was a superior forensic pathologist and after examining Monroe’s body he had reported no trace of the yellow dye, which simply had to have been there if she took the pills. Thank Christ they were able retrieve and destroy most of the evidence that could have condemned them, from prepared slides and autopsy documents in the Coroner’s office to Marilyn’s phone bills, a damning list of numbers that she called again and again like a fucking Chatty Cathy doll pulling its own string . . .

  Johnny drifted off, staring blankly while the assistant finished bandaging his head. Soon his eyes cleared and he wondered who the heck those people were; Bobby and No Gootchie and a woman who swallowed so many wasps that they killed her. He was silly!

  What wasn’t silly was the way nasty old Randall Kraft was pointing at the pretty lady and telling his mean-looking special helper to bring her over here. Maybe Mr. Kraft wanted to look at her cute ass some more. Johnny had seen him looking at her cute ass a few minutes ago.
Or maybe, jeez, maybe he wanted to make her sad! Old Mr. Kraft was always making people angry or sad, and maybe he was going to do that to the nice, pretty lady.