Time spike

by Eric Flint

  And instead of the normal eight inch run and eight inch rise with a tread of eight or nine inches, the stone stairs had a six inch tread.

  And their rise and run varied from step to step. Eight inches, six inches, nine inches, four inches. The stairs, built without a handrail, had been designed to slow prisoners down. They were difficult to climb and treacherous to descend at any pace above a snail's. The guards, four members of the prison's extraction team, went up the stairs sideways, at a pace most people wouldn't have thought possible. Once at the top, they fanned out. It didn't take long to check the cells, bathrooms and guard's station. The wing was clear. No prisoners. Inside one of the cells was a small wooden sculpture of a woman. Her perky nose, full hair and large eyes almost matched a photograph lying on the bottom bunk. Scrawled on the wall opposite the bunk was a message written in bright green paint: I am murdered Beneath that message was another: No honor among thieves The men looked at the graffiti. After a few seconds, Lowell Van Wagenen sighed. "It's not like Mark to leave his wife's picture on the bunk."

  The others nodded. Mark Huston carried Peggy Huston's photo everywhere he went. The man showed it to anyone who would look at it. He had once said it was his life ring, the thing that kept him sane. No one ever pointed out that sanity was not the man's strong suit. Or that Peggy's photo looked just like Reba McEntire when she was young. Or that, according to his prison records, Mark had never married. Instead, they were grateful. From the time the picture showed up until the day of the Quiver they hadn't had to rush him to the infirmary because he had eaten glass or razor blades. They hadn't had to put him on suicide watch or in the hole for fighting with other prisoners. And not once did a C.O. get gunned down with a bucket of piss and shit. Mark loved his Peggy and their two children, a boy and girl who looked like kids out of a Sears catalogue. He was always full of stories about their antics in school and how they helped their mother. He made no phone calls and received no letters. But he could always tell you what they did over the weekend. A three-time loser who would never see the outside, he talked about the things he would do with his family once he got home. The fishing trips they would take, and the vacations to Yellow Ray and Disney World. He even took classes at the prison school so he could earn a living once he was on the outside. He planned to go straight. He was going to do it for the kids. He wanted them to grow up right. He wanted his son to be a doctor and his girl to marry well.

  There would be no jailbird for her. Gently, Lowell put the photograph in his shirt pocket and said, "Let's go." A few minutes later they rejoined Andy and the other guards, who had just finished with cellblock A. It was as empty as the one the extraction team had checked and no one was happy about it. The prison felt like a trap waiting to be sprung. The empty buildings and empty walkways echoed with their footsteps and whispers. The mix of guards, Cherokees and U.S. soldiers no longer fanned out quite as quickly when they entered a new area. They wanted to stay clustered together; their faces mirrored their emotions. They crossed the prison checking each cell house, garbage dumpster and abandoned vehicle they passed.

  Methodically, they worked their way to the exercise yard. They could hear an occasional gunshot from somewhere in the prison, and a fair amount of shouting or screaming. But not enough. Not two thousand prisoners enough. Rod Hulbert was on the roof of the administration building watching Captain Blacklock and Chief Watkins. Marie Keehn and two dozen of the guards were waiting at the east gate. Their plan had been pretty straightforward. They would attack the prison from the front and the west, herding the prisoners through the safe-lookingeast opening. Once through the wall, Marie and her people would start dropping them until and unless they surrendered. Rod was nervous. So far, he had counted only thirty-three prisoners moving around. Most of them were dead, thanks either to him or Blacklock's people. And Cook's Boomers had taken out three of the towers, which accounted for another half dozen to a dozen. That wasway too low. Things were about to get deadly. They had to. There were only four buildings left to go through: C-block, D-block, the infirmary and the machine shop. And for two thousand men to be in those buildings, it would be elbow to elbow.

  He watched, ready to take down anyone he could spot. Andy and a dozen guards, backed up by Kershner and his men, were about to storm the infirmary. Most of those who would remain outside surrounded the building, their weapons trained on every window and door. A dozen others stood with their backs to the buildings. If any prisoners had been missed, and tried to come at them from behind, they would be ready. "Goddamit, where's Haggerty?" Luff demanded of the two lieutenants he still had with him in the war room. "And Jimmy should be back by now, too." But Jimmy Walker was in pieces, by then.

  Preoccupied and worried because he hadn't been able to find Michaels and Metcalf, he'd made the mistake of passing too closely by one of the locked cells in C-block packed with unreliable inmates. Hands-many hands-had seized him and yanked him against the bars. The hands tried to take his rifle, too, but the rifle had come loose and fallen on the floor too far away to be reached. Still, the hands had Walker. And while the men who owned those hands couldn't get out of the cell, they could go to work on him. And when they tired, pass him to the hands in the next cell. He spent the rest of his life seeing nothing but hands.

  Black hands, white hands, brown hands. Some of them were very strong.

  All of them were very eager. He didn't see anything, after a while.

  His eyes were gone. Soon after, he stopped screaming. His throat was gone too. "What do we do, boss?" asked Boyne. "We didn't expect this." James didn't have an answer. He'd thought they'd be occupied the whole time taking the towers. But after the second tower, that Morelli had taken, the towers were empty. Somebody had been in those towers. Cigarette butts were strewn all over. But they were gone now. *** In a clearing in the woods just out of sight of the prison, Jenny Radford and Barbara Ray did another check of their supplies.

  There was no point to that, really. They'd gotten their improvised battlefield medical center set up long since. The handful of guards Andy had left to protect them-against predators, more than the possibility of convicts coming out-at least had that duty to keep them busy. Jenny and Barbara had nothing. Another useless check of the supplies at least kept them from having fits.

  Chapter 55 Andy approached the door to the infirmary, praying his vest would take whatever came out the window at him. Nothing came. He halfheartedly pulled on the doorknob, expecting it to be locked. It wasn't. Hurriedly, he stepped into the entryway. The second set of doors was also unlocked. His nerves were stretched tight. His heart was in his throat. None of this made any sense. He jumped through the door opening and turned around, checking the mirrors over his head.

  All the halls were empty. There was a strange, pungent odor in the air. He couldn't quite place it. The other guards and Kershner and his men were now just two steps behind him. They moved slowly across the floor. He waved at the examining room and one of the guards disappeared into its interior and returned in a short while, shaking his head. Another guard had moved on, checking the break room and then the records room. Again, a headshake. Andy looked at the stairwell leading up to the second floor and couldn't help but wince. The moment they were inside the stairwell they would become sitting ducks. He opened the door and stepped through it, motioning for the others to follow. As quickly and quietly as possible, they climbed the stairs and reached the top. Again, the door wasn't locked. He opened it, gave a soft shove and it swung wide. The strange odor was there, stronger now, but no prisoners. They moved quickly, fanning out. "Blacklock.

  Over here." Kershner and Pitzel were staring into a row of three cells. Andy hurried over. Bodies were stacked inside all of the cells, reaching from the floor to within a foot of the ceiling. All of them were headless. All of them were naked. "Over here," Watkins called.

  They turned and went over. It was another cell. This one was lined with heads. "Jesus," one of the guards whispered. "We knew about the meat lockers, but…" An
dy's stomach churned and he could feel the room spin. He took a deep breath and regretted it immediately. He recognized the peculiar scent, now. But it wasn't the scent that nauseated him-that was just the smell of powerful disinfectant cleaning fluids, mixed with… ammonia, maybe. Or bleach. What sickened him was the realization of what had happened. Having filled the freezers, and still not knowing what to do with more bodies, Luff must have decided this was the best temporary solution. Drenching the corpses with this home-made let's-hope-it-works hideous brew must have been what he decided would keep the bodies from decaying before he could figure out a final solution. There was always a method to the man's madness, as mad as it might be. "Okay," he said. "I need an estimate. How many dead?" Jeff Edelman walked toward them, his face pale. "There are a hundred and forty-two names on this list. Every one of them except the last nineteen has a line drawn through it." He handed Andy the clipboard he'd found on the desk. They found the guillotine in C-block. Along with-thank God-hundreds of convicts still alive, packed in their cells. And, outside the cells, what was left of a convict that Andy thought might be-might have been-Jimmy Walker.

  Andy walked down the line of cells, staring at the still-living inmates. For their part, they stared back at him silently. Some of them were crying. Eventually, one of the inmates cleared his throat and said: "Nice to see you again, Captain Blacklock. Where you been?"

  "Nice to see you, Franklin. I've been detained by other business, I'm afraid. But I'm back now." Franklin cleared his throat. "Good. We wound up missing you. A lot." "Where's Luff?" whispered the inmate next to Franklin. Andy shook his head. "We don't know yet. But we'll find him." "When you do, kill him. Kill all of them. Please." Andy didn't reply to that. He'd already come to the conclusion himself that that was probably the only rational solution. But being back inside the place he'd worked for many years-the place that, strange as it might be, had shaped his sense of duty, even his sense of self-he didn't feel able to give that order. What he could order with regard to foreign conquistadores, he simply couldn't do with regard to inmates who were under his authority. Rod would think he was nuts, of course. Rod was probably even right. But Andy wasn't Hulbert. "Don't worry about Luff," was all he finally said. "Whatever else, he's done." There came the sound of a fusillade, from far away. A big one, and it was ongoing. Andy keyed his radio. Before he could even ask, Marie's voice came over it, providing the answer. "A lot of inmates are trying to make a break through the east gate. We're gunning them down. But they keep pouring out. Must be fifty of them already, and there's more coming." "Are they armed? Can you handle it?" "Yes, they're armed. Rifles, mostly. But they're completely panicked, Andy.

  They're not even shooting back. Just trying to get to the woods." They had to be Luff's own people, then. Between what they'd learned from the armory raid and what they'd seen since storming the prison, Luff had disarmed every convict except his own inner circle-and most of that inner circle was now trying to get out. "Shoot as many as you can, but don't take any risks. If some of them make it to the woods, we can live with it. Their ammunition won't last long, no matter what.

  After that, it's them barehanded against the dinosaurs." "Right. My money's on the dinosaurs." It sound as if Marie and her people could handle it, and Andy needed to concentrate on taking the machine shop.

  This was almost over, and he wanted to finish it. Now, before the horror just overwhelmed him. He knew that, to the day he died, he'd never be able to get those images out of his mind. And would always blame himself for the slaughter, in the end, no matter what reassurances people gave him. The horror had happened on his watch.

  For someone like him, with his sense of duty, that was all that mattered. The only thing he could do now was end it. Watkins came up to him. "Don't worry about the ones who make it into the woods. Kevin and a few others can take care of that problem, over the next few days. Might take a week. Probably not." Andy stared at him. Watkins smiled. "For Kevin, it'll be like hunting deer. Except deer are more dangerous." All things considered… "Okay, fine. We'll leave it to him." Hearing a little commotion, he turned. James Cook and about half of the Boomers had come into C-block. "The towers are secure,"

  Cook said without preamble. "And one of your guards-I don't know his name-told me to tell you that they've cleared D-block. They found a couple of hundred prisoners in there still alive. All of them locked up except seven, and those went back into a cell without putting up a fuss. So what's the plan now?" Hearing that two hundred people had survived in D-block was something of a relief. But not much. That block had held over three times that many inmates, just a few weeks earlier. But Andy pushed that aside, for the time being. First things first. "Machine shop. All that's left." Cook nodded, then gave the cells packed with still-living inmates a long, considering look. "You want, we Boomers can pick out some worthy men for you. Have them take the lead in the charge." He gave the prisoners that distinctive smile of his. The one Andy thought would probably terrify Las Vegas casino owners if they saw it coming. It was obviously terrifying some of the inmates. "Least the fuckwads can do," Cook added. The offer was tempting. But Andy wasn't about to go there. "No, we'll handle it. Our job, not theirs." "Get ready," said Luff. "We'll butcher 'em as they come in, and it'll all be over." The twenty men he had left didn't say anything. A couple of them nodded. Luff decided things had probably worked out for the best. Reliability was the key. With steady men, you could accomplish wonders, and the last hour or so had been a ruthless selection process. Any of Luff's reliables who weren't quite reliable were trying to get out through the east gate. Or trying to hide somewhere. The ones left were really reliable. All he needed. "Come out with your hands in the air! You will not be asked again. You have exactly ten seconds to respond." From inside the building came a reply. "Fuck you!" Andy looked at his watch and waited. "Five seconds!" There was no response. "One second!" Crack! That shot almost hit him. He could hear the bullet whizzing by. Before he could even give the order, three guards lobbed gas canisters through the building's broken windows. Hulbert could see movement through the open windows, even with the smoke. He said to the guard lying next to him on the roof: "I'm right-you're left." That was Bradley Scott, one of the guard force's sharpshooters. Scott fired a moment later. By then, Rod had a man in his scope and took him down. For the next few seconds, firing from the vantage point of the roof and working from each side, they shot every man inside the machine shop who made himself visible. Six, all told, and maybe two others. Not all of them would be dead, though. Three of the shots Rod had taken had been at exposed limbs, and he was sure the same was true of Scott. Nickerson and the other shooters on the other buildings were doing the same. Two minutes went by. After the first ten seconds or so, no shots had been fired from the machine shop. There'd been no counterfire at all.

  During that time, other guards kept lobbing gas canisters into the building. By now, Rod knew, the inmates inside would be in bad shape.

  Suddenly, waving a white strip of some kind of cloth, five men burst out of the building. Two men came behind them, but those last two were shot in the back by someone still inside before they could get out of the door. The five men who'd made it out were coughing, their eyes running. Two of them vomited the second they were through the door and took their first breath of fresh air. Vomiting or not, though, they scrambled to the side, out of the line of fire of anyone in the machine shop. The other three men had already done so. None of the guards moved. Andy went over, crouching low, and caught one of the prisoners by the shirt. "Who's still in there, Sternwood? Answer me, damn you." "Luff. Him and Krouse and Ray." He coughed. "Everybody else is dead in there, 'cept us. Maybe one or two more are alive, but they's hurt bad." One last charge, then. If that much gas hadn't forced Luff and the other two out, adding more wouldn't help. Andy would lead the charge himself. It was his responsibility. He dragged the prisoner over to the next building, letting the other four make their own way on hands and knees. Once that was done, he started giving orders into the
radio. But James Cook interrupted him before he got very far. Somehow or other, he'd gotten his hands on a radio. He must have been standing next to a guard holding one, and had told him to hand it over. The guard would have obeyed, probably without even thinking about it. Cook was one of those people-Andy was another, himself-to whom authority came easily. "Andy, that's nuts. Fuck the machine shop. I've been talking to Boyne and he tells me most of the equipment in there will survive anyway. It's steel and cast iron."