***
Late the next day, threescore hungry, tired people found themselves herded through the gates of Internment Camp 240. Black-clad SS lined up with truncheons, and used them on several people who didn’t move fast enough.
Give people a little power, and they will use it, and not usually for good.
Jill stayed close to Python, but not too close, trying to give the guards nothing out of place to focus on. Right now they were alert and primed for trouble. The time to do something different, anything against the rules or to create an advantage was later, when they were lulled by the routine.
On the other hand, standard POW doctrine said the best time to escape was early on, before things got too organized, and when there might still be holes in their procedures. Somewhere, sometime she should be able to find a sweet spot, between the disruption of newness and the dullness of routine.
Surreptitiously checking her GPS confirmed what she already suspected from the harvested fields of cornstalks all around: the camp was in Iowa. More precisely, to the northwest of the town of Osceola, which was forty or fifty miles south of Des Moines. She could see several farmhouses, but no activity. Perhaps they had been evacuated.
It was a prime spot for a prison camp, with nothing but rough fields in all directions. A few wooded gullies offered the illusion of cover, but she had no doubt there was very little in the area the SS had not thoroughly reconnoitered. Once outside the double barbed-wire fence, where would the average escapee go?
They were herded into lines to be processed. First they passed through large communal restrooms with no walls between toilets. Under the watchful eyes of hard-faced female guards, they did their business. Jill considered putting the GPS back in its hiding place, but she did not know whether a body cavity search still awaited, and decided to abandon it. She set the little box down beside her toilet, one of the few places not easily visible, and left it there. Better that she not be caught and marked as knowing anything special.
She also made sure she retained what was in her bowels, hopefully until she had some privacy to retrieve the things inside.
In the next building they were checked once more, but still with no body cavity search. There seemed to be a lot of prisoners in the camp, and relatively few guards. Perhaps they didn’t have enough manpower – or at least, enough people willing to do this kind of work. Perhaps they relied on the Eden Plague virtue effect to minimize any trouble. Perhaps they thought the people were all sheep.
Jill tried to recall what she knew about the internment of Japanese civilians in World War Two. It was probably a closer analogy than Nazi concentration camps. Hopefully the point of this facility was not extermination…at least, not now. Things might change as the “Eden Problem” spread, and if the Unionist party ever took full power.
After processing, the men and women mingled again. They’re going to have a population explosion in about nine months if they aren’t careful. That thought led her down dark paths as she considered just how the SS was likely to prevent it. Forced sterilization, at least vasectomies for the men, seemed like the easiest method. She wondered if the Plague could reverse such a surgery.
At the last station, she received a shrink-wrapped package the size of a large pillow. It looked like it held bedding and a few sundries. She also received an electronic card with a number on it. “Don’t lose that, or you won’t eat,” the clerk said. “Next!”
Jill exited the building into the interior of the camp. “What now, boss?” Python asked as he walked up to her, hands thrust into jeans pockets in the cold breeze.
“Recon the camp. You go left, I’ll go right, along the fence line. Come back through the middle and meet right there.” Jill pointed with her chin at what looked like a chapel building, easy to spot for its plain spire.
Jill’s man nodded and turned to stroll the fence counterclockwise, and she did the same on the other side. She counted at least forty two-story barracks on this side of the camp, along with dining halls, muddy ball fields with bleachers, a laundry, a separate shower building, and a large supply store that sold basic necessities like soap and towels. All the buildings looked to be prefabs, hastily thrown up with no foundations, no drainage, and rudimentary sidewalks made of discarded wooden pallets. It would be hell when it rained.
Inside one near-empty barracks building she added up the bunks. More than one hundred double racks meant at least two hundred people per, eight thousand on this side of the camp. Room for sixteen thousand in this place alone, then, and a lot more could be crammed in if necessary.
Rounding a corner, she came upon two rough-looking young men. Their eyes widened on seeing her, and they moved to obstruct her way. Each had a two-by-two board about the length of a baseball bat, and prison ink on their arms.
Great. Convicts preying on Edens.
Quickly, Jill put her back to the wall beside her and glanced back the way she had come. Another man, older than the first two, blocked her retreat with a shiv in his hand.
“Don’t start no trouble now, missy,” one of the younger ones in front of her said. “We just want the packet. Give it to us and you can go.”
Letting them have it might have been the smart play, but everything Jill had ever heard about prisons said that backing down was a sure-fire way to look weak and be preyed upon. Even if this place hadn’t turned into a hellhole yet, she wasn’t about to let these bastards help it along the way.
Instead of talking, she dropped the package into the dirt and took three quick strides toward the older man. While most people are more afraid of a knife than a club, Jill knew that two men with sticks were far more dangerous than one with a short blade.
The man slashed at her with the knife and backed up instinctively, clearly not ready for her aggressive move. She avoided his swing easily and kicked at his knee, connecting solidly. He fell with a grunt of pain.
One down.
Jill immediately turned and ran toward the opposite building’s wall, knowing the two bat-men would be rushing her from behind. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw one helping the man with the knife, and the other following her with stick raised.
The older one must be the leader of their little bandit gang, and the younger one had given in to his instinct to please his boss. Bad move. Turning around, she put the wall on her right, her attacker between herself and the other two, so she could see them all. When he swung, right-handed baseball style as she expected, she jumped back, and his stick slammed into the building.
Instantly she reversed and kicked upward, aiming at his groin, but happy to come in a little high and drive the ball of her foot into his belly. He bent over with a whoosh of breath so she grabbed his medium-length hair, driving her knee into his face. Something broke, and he dropped senseless onto the ground.
Jill picked up the stick, hefting it as she walked toward the other two. “Who’s next?” she asked cheerfully.
The younger man started for her with his stick, but the older one grabbed his elbow. “No,” he said. “Let’s go.” The two men slunk off around the corner, leaving their compatriot to his fate.
Jill stood over the fallen man and thought for a moment, and then she worked a tiny hobby blade out of a seam in her jacket collar, the kind that fitted into a handle the size of a pencil. Using it, she stabbed her wrist over a vein and squatted to splash the resultant gush of blood into his half-open mouth. Then she picked up her package and left, her thumb sealing the cut for the minute or two it took to heal.
Jill waited for Python for fifteen minutes at the side of the chapel. When he arrived, she told him about her encounter. Then they compared notes on the camp. The only major difference in his side seemed to be that instead of a supply store it had an indoor auditorium seating at least a thousand.
“Looks like we find our own place,” Python rumbled. “Lots of people have staked their own spaces with hanging blankets and scrounged materials. I checked out eight or nine buildings. Some are full of families, and the men ar
e not letting anyone that doesn’t live there inside. One had only women, with the same setup. One with a bunch of hard cases had no security at all, but I had to kick the shit out of two guys to get out.”
“It’s a new camp,” she said. “Not full yet. Wild West still. There is probably no prisoners’ administration, no central authority. Many of the people are Edens but until all the troublemakers are infected, it’s going to be a dangerous place.”
“Yeah. I saw three roving patrols of a dozen SS each, with riot armor, truncheons, beanbag air guns and radios. All the firearms are outside the fence. There’s also a command post inside the auditorium.”
Jill nodded. “Yeah. I saw ten or twelve troops around the supply store. I wonder what passes for currency here?”
“Camp scrip.” Python handed her a small piece of printed plastic. “Everyone gets a weekly allotment in cash. There’s some inside your packet. Also I saw normal money, and barter – cigarettes, candy. Like any jail. Inside is inside.”
“Yeah. So, any ideas on where is safe to crash?”
He shrugged. “Maybe someplace with couples?”
“Good idea. Let’s go look.”
They’d lost count of barracks buildings when they found what they were looking for: a half-full building with young people, mostly paired off. A few had babies, and there were a few groups of teenagers trying to look tough and uncaring. Mostly they seemed forlorn and lost. Jill and Python claimed an area for themselves.
One of the items Jill retrieved on her first toilet visit was a tiny multi-tool. Using its pliers, they partly dismantled four bunked beds and built a corner enclosure they could pull inward, creating some security when they slept. It also yielded some short, heavy lengths of steel pipe that could be concealed in waistbands and used as weapons.
“All right. I’m starving,” Python said. To Jill he looked sallow and unhealthy, and she realized he must be running on empty as his body healed the damage she’d inflicted on him.
“Yeah, me too.” They found the nearest cafeteria and used their cards to gain entrance.
Once inside they were allowed once through the serving line, the food dished out by sullen trusties under the watchful eyes of more SS guards. They exited with their trays from the service area into a communal dining room with more guards.
Jill and Python ate ravenously as they observed their fellow detainees. Almost everyone else consumed all they had immediately. Jill wondered how long before they would be allowed to eat again – a certain number of hours? Three times per day? A few people slipped fruit or other portable food into pockets, and the guards did not seem to care.
It interested Jill to classify those who saved food. One category included parents whose children did not eat everything. Uninfected hard cases seemed to do it often as well. She guessed their caloric needs were less than an Eden, and they would barter or hoard what they could. A third type of people simply looked thin, even malnourished. She wondered about those.
Once they had finished eating, they went back to their bunks in the barracks block. No one had disturbed their bedding, and they’d brought everything portable, such as soap and scrip, with them in their pockets.
A half hour of conversation with their new barracks mates gave them a lot of information about the routine of the camp. Meals could be had three times a day, once during each eight-hour period. Some ate late and then early, to feel full. Some spaced their meals out equally. Almost everyone seemed hungry all the time, and food was the most valuable commodity in the camp.
That explained the parents saving food for kids, or just for later, and the hard cases, for barter. Jill wondered again about those she dubbed “skinnies.” What was their story? Nobody in their barracks knew, or had even noticed.
***
A week later Jill and Python found out, by the simple expedient of following one of them. He skulked into a nondescript barracks building no different from any other, except for two things. It was one of the closest to the edge of the camp, less than fifty yards from the fence. It was also controlled by men and women with a certain look about them.
A military look. Jill could spot them a mile away, and they had it.
“I think we just found our escape committee,” she said, nudging her sidekick as they watched from well back.
“How can you tell?” Python seemed to be genuinely curious.
“How can you spot a con?”
He shrugged. “Just a look they got.”
“Right. I can spot military. It’s also close to the wire. And you see that guy carrying in a board? I bet we see another couple of boards, or maybe metal from bunks, brought inside in the next few minutes.”
They watched, and it was just as Jill had said. “I think they got a tunnel in there.”
Python snorted. “What do they need a tunnel for? There’s only two hundred guards on site at any one time, and ten thousand people. We could just grab pipes and beat down the wire if we could get people organized.”
“These people aren’t cons. Only one in fifty, one in a hundred is going to stick his neck out. A tunnel is low risk, high payoff.”
“So why the skinnies?”
Jill replied, “They’re giving up some of their food for the workers. Hard work means extra calories. Doubly so for those with the Plague.”
“They could have enough if they got more people to contribute.”
“But then more people would know about it. There have to be informers among us, probably some of the hard cases, paid off in cigarettes, extra food, scrip. Maybe drugs.”
“Yeah,” Python mused. “I’ve seen some meth around. Also a few phones.”
“Those won’t do us any good. Besides, they’ll all be bugged. It’s easy when there’s only one tower in line of sight.” Jill pointed off in the distance at a tall structure, perhaps five miles away, on a low hill. “So forget about that. We just need to get out.”
“So…we join this escape committee?”
Jill motioned Python back, and started walking around, not wanting anyone to notice their scrutiny. “What do you think we should do?”
His forehead wrinkled in thought. “If we muscle in, we’ll have to do something. Dig, or give up food, or something. Also, if they get caught, we do too. Some of the troublemakers already been put in solitary.” The confinement blockhouse stood outside the wire, an ugly windowless rectangle with steel doors. Those who spent time there came back cowed and starved.
“Yeah. I don’t think they’re following the Geneva Conventions inside there, either. So, I’m with you. Let’s not get caught. But we can still help.”
“How?” They turned a corner and walked over to the inside track along the wire, where many of the detainees strolled. It was the closest they could get to feeling unconfined.
Jill replied, “We can gather food, and supply it to them. We just have to figure out a simple way to keep our distance. And I have another idea, but it’s going to be a lot trickier. I’ll tell you about it later, when I’ve thought about it some more.”
“Well I got an idea about the food. We can charge for security.”
Jill glanced crossways at Python. “What?”
He shrugged. “We’re already running the muscle for our barracks building. Might as well charge the straights something for it.”
“Python, I need you to think like a cop on this one, not a con. Be a sheepdog, not a wolf.”
He laughed. “Me? A cop? You’re kidding.”
Jill stopped and faced the thin man, now a lot less grizzled and scarred. “I got news for you, Keith. Yeah, I know that’s your name. Don’t ask me how. You’re a different person already. You’re still a hard case, but I bet the thought of murdering someone in cold blood twists your guts up.”
He looked uncomfortable, shrugged. “Yeah, so?”
“Look,” she said, putting a hand on his arm, the first time she’d touched him with anything like affection since she’d passed him the Plague. “Violence has its place in the world. I k
now, because I spent my youth in a street gang and then I joined the Marine Corps. I’m not asking you to be weak. I’m telling you that you can be strong and good at the same time.”
Then she kissed him, for real. “Let’s go back to the barracks.”
He swallowed. “What about getting pregnant?”
And that proves you’ve changed, Keith my Python. The old you wouldn’t have even cared.
“I think we can have some fun even without that risk.”
***
“I can’t believe this is working.” Python shook his head. “Getting everyone in our block to chip in food…don’t make no sense.”
“Fear isn’t the only human motivator,” Jill replied. “Altruism, kindness, or just enlightened self interest work too, otherwise who would give to charity?”
“Tax breaks,” Python ventured.
“That helps,” she admitted, “and getting your name on a plaque, things like that. But some people just give because they want to help people. Or they believe in karma, or God, or something like that. What goes around, comes around.”
“And payback’s a bitch. Okay.” He looked at the pillowcases of food they’d collected from the nearly two hundred people in their building. It had become a popular block even before they organized better security, after Jill and Python had dealt with a couple of attempts to extort their fellow prisoners.
The place even had a waiting list, because Jill had organized a score of the men and a couple of the women into a neighborhood watch. Half the collected food went to them, adding roughly twenty percent to her unofficial security officers’ diets. It was only fair, since they did work the hardest.
The other half of the food filled the two pillowcases they carried. Now that one part of her plan had worked out, Jill was ready for the next. “Let’s go.”
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