He shakes his head no, his other hand fumbling for the keys at his waist, attempting to pull the ring of keys from his belt.
“Where’s Amy? What about Ben? Are they okay?” I ask, choking on my words, fear trickling down my spine.
Pete shakes his head, still stumbling toward me. His hand finally frees the key loop from his waist and he holds them out to me. He gets to within fifteen feet and stops, his shoulders hunching as he coughs again and then drops to his knees. He looks up to me, choking on more blood, and then falls face first to the floor.
I flinch, a shiver running down my back. “Hello? Is anybody there?” I shout loudly, looking up into the security cameras. “He needs help. Somebody come and help him!” I pull on my cuffs, but it’s pointless. I scan the ground, seeing the keys have slid along the floor closer to me, and I slide down to my ass, stretching out my legs to reach them. My shoe touches the tip, but they’re too far away. I slide as low as I can, feeling the metal cuffs digging into my flesh as I stretch and pull to get closer to the keys.
I yell out in frustration as my shoe touches them again, clinking them until I can get the toe of my shoe over the top of the ring, and slowly—centimeter by agonizing centimeter—I drag them closer to me. I look up at my wrists as blood trickles down from the scores the cuffs have dug into my skin. The blood trails down to my elbow and into my armpit. I look back at the keys, my muscles burning with the strain, and see Pete look up at me.
He growls, his eyes cloudy and his lips turned up in a snarl. I pause, frozen to the spot, until he pulls one hand out from under himself, then the other, and begins to crawl along the floor toward me.
I tap my shoe on top of the keys again, dragging them closer until they’re within arm’s reach. But my arms are cuffed to the railing and I can’t reach for them.
“Shit!” I shout in frustration as Pete draws closer.
His face nears my feet and his hand reaches for my foot as he opens his mouth wide. I kick out at him, catching him in the jaw, feeling his teeth dig into my shoe. His head snaps backwards, but he’s on me again before I can do anything, his hands clawing up my legs, his mouth going wide again to take a bite out of my calf. I scream and shout, bucking my body to get him off me, until his feet end up back near my shoes and I kick and kick at him. He comes forward, and every time he does I kick him again until his face turns to a bloody, pulpy mess and drenches the floor with his blood. He gurgles and growls, but he’s slowing down, and as he reaches for me again I clasp his head between my feet and buck my body, essentially smashing his head against the ground. I repeat the action even as his fingers claw at me, digging into my calf muscle and beginning to pull it apart.
Burning hot and cold run down my leg and I scream and smash his head again, my grip loosening with the pain. He looks up at me, making a strange moaning sound, and I slam my foot into his face, smashing his nose to the back of his head. He stops and then drops to the ground for the second time today, but I have a feeling he won’t be coming back from this. I pull my legs up to my chest and stand up on shaking and tired feet, staring up into the camera.
“Somebody help us!” I plead.
Four.
The blood congeals around my feet and I try to step away from the ever growing puddle, but I can’t. Eventually the browny-red liquid pools under my feet. I can’t see the keys anymore, and I presume they’re underneath Pete or whatever that thing was. It sure didn’t seem like the guard I knew. We were never on first name basis—I only knew his from overhearing other guards—but he was one of the good ones for sure. Well, he wasn’t as big of an asshole as some of the others, and he sure as hell didn’t deserve the end he just got.
The security camera light continues to blink at me. I know it’s on and recording, and I know there should be someone watching, but the fact that no one has come leaves me feeling uncomfortable and wondering if there actually is anyone there. It seems unlikely that they would let me kick a man to death and not do anything about it. Worse still, I realize I don’t feel bad about it. My only thought is to get out of these cuffs so I can go and find Amy and Ben.
My stomach twists in knots at the thought of them. Jesus, I need to get out of here. I rattle the cuffs again, pain stabbing across my wrists and making them bleed all over again. I try to dislocate my thumb to squeeze my hand out from them, but I can’t do it, no matter how much I push on it. I look down below me, still seeing no one, and panic sets in me. They need me; Amy and Ben need me right now, and I’m stuck here.
“Help me! Somebody help me!” I shout as loud as I can, over and over until my throat feels raw.
I scoot back down to the floor, sitting in Pete’s still-warm blood, and slide my legs out until my feet touch his body. I nudge him with my foot, waiting a beat to see if he moves, and when he doesn’t I nudge him again. I repeat the action until I manage to turn his body. It’s not fully over, but I can see the keys beneath him, making me even more frustrated.
I stretch out again, letting the cuffs dig back into my broken skin, barely acknowledging the pain in my eagerness to get the keys. But no matter how much I stretch, I can’t quite get my foot on them properly. I try a different tactic and push the body back over onto its front, placing my feet upon his smashed-up head and feeling the crushed bones underneath my feet, and pull the body toward me. I flinch when the head touches my calf, and still for a second as the head gets close to my crotch. He’s dead, I know that, but part of me is still waiting for him to move and take out my most sacred body part with it. I shudder.
I reach my arm out when his body is as close as I can get it, and grab the scruff of his collar and flip him over. The keys are there and I grab them up out of the blood, feeling the stickiness dripping over my fingers and hand and trying not to look at the face. I shudder and stand back up, carefully trying each key until they clink open. I pull my wrist free, wincing at the pain, pocket the keys, and run for the visitors’ room, hoping not to bump into anyone along the way. If a guard sees me he’ll put me back in my cell. If any of these sick bastards see me—what? What will they do? I shake my head and keep running, leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind me. I can’t think about that right now.
The doors to every room are unlocked, and the prison is eerily quiet. I’d like to think that things were a little weird, but that would be a massive understatement. Things are more than weird, things are completely fucked.
I reach the visitors’ room—or the prisoner side of it anyway, since I have no idea how to get to the visiting side—and slowly turn the handle. The room is dark, the only light coming from the small windows at the top of the wall on the other side of the glass and filtering through to this side. In the murkiness I hear footsteps, and I force my eyes to try and focus on where the sound is coming from. Bodies litter the floor—both guards and prisoners from what I can tell—and there’s blood spray on the walls and glass windows. The room on the other side is quiet, too quiet, and I pray that it’s because everyone got out.
I step cautiously into the room, a sound coming from my left making me jump, and I hit out at someone. They don’t cry out or shout like a normal person would, but growl and reach for me again, and I realize it must be one of the sick. Stepping back from it, I finally focus on its face—or what’s left of it—and just as quickly scan the floor for a weapon. Seeing a guard in a heap on the floor, a baton still clutched in his bloody and unmoving fingers, I reach down and pry it from his grip, still avoiding the growling man who keeps coming for me. I kick out at him and send him flying across the room, but he doesn’t seem bothered and begins to climb back up to his feet. I recognize him as Andrew Collins. I can’t remember what he was in for. I’m sure he told me once, but I was never interested in making friends in here and I paid no attention. But I recognize his face—or rather his deep scar, which runs from the top of his forehead down to his ear, as if whoever did it had wanted to peel his face off.
“Stay back, Andrew,” I say, my voice full of as much menace as
I can muster. My intent is clear as I swing the baton in front of his face, intentionally missing him only by millimeters, but he doesn’t care; he doesn’t flinch and he doesn’t even try to grab the bat from me, but continues to move forward as if uncaring or unseeing of it.
I trip over another body on the floor. It murmurs in response, but whoever it is doesn’t get up and I can’t look away from Andrew to see who it is. I just hope it isn’t another one of these things.
Andrew steps closer again, and I swing and hit him in the shoulder, but again he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t recognize any sort of pain. It’s his turn to stumble over the bodies on the floor now, and as he tries on hands and knees to get back up, I grit my teeth and swing, striking him across the back of the head. He slumps to the floor and then tries to regain himself and push back up with another growl. I swing harder this time, using the baton much like a club as I hit him over and over until I feel it sink into his skull and blood spray up around me.
I gag and stagger away, pulling the baton out of his now concave head, listening to the sucking sound as it comes unstuck, and gag again. Choking and coughing on the vomit that makes its way up, I turn and face the viewing window, my eyes taking a moment to focus on the carnage within the room.
The floor is littered with bodies—some moving, others not—but the horrifying thing is what I’ve known I would see all along: the mobile ones are eating the immobile ones, scooping up body parts and intestines and shoveling them into their mouths. The door is shut on that side, locking everyone in. If anyone had been alive, they would have been trapped in that room. My eyes scan each body, trying to find any sign of Amy or Ben, hoping that I won’t, and as a satisfied look begins to cross my face, fate steps in and sucker punches me when I finally see a portion of Amy’s pink, flowery skirt. Just a small strip of fabric. I press myself to the window and yell out a no, hitting my fists against the thickened glass and attracting the attention of one of the sick—or whatever the fuck they are—on the other side. He’s a guard, and as he stands and staggers toward me, relinquishing the body he was pulling apart and baring his bloody teeth at me, I see that the body is Amy. I sag against the glass, anguish and anger rising inside me in equal measures.
The guard hits the glass with the bloody stump where his hand should be and growls again, smearing the glass with blood and alerting another one of the sick—the woman dressed like a whore; the woman who let her own son be attacked by one of these people. I grimace, my eyes trying to see past them to find Ben. I run from window to window looking and praying until I see him.
My boy. A small bundle of moving graying flesh writhing on the floor amid bloodied parts. His eyes are white and unfocused, his once perfect pink little lips speckled with blood, with something meaty pressed between them. My shoulders drop, my heart sinking into a black abyss as I slide to the floor, turning my eyes away from the sight of my son. I clutch a hand to my chest, the pain drilling holes into my very soul. I sob, wallowing, self-pitying tears thundering down my face as the pain makes the room spin. My head falls into my hands, the ground swallowing me up as my body slumps to the cold concrete floor.
*
I blink, my eyelids sticking as I slowly pry them open slowly. The room is pitch black and I struggle to make sense of where I am. For a minute I think I’m back in my cell, Jason snoring loudly like he does, and I ready myself to tell him to shut the hell up; but then I pause, realizing that something isn’t right and I’m not on my hard-as-hell mattress.
My head throbs in pain and I try to sit up. The image of my son comes to the foreground and I cry out involuntarily. Movement somewhere in the room makes me pause, and I hold my breath, willing my eyes to widen as much as they can. It must be night out, because I can’t see a damn thing. There’s no daylight shining through now—the only light being the small red emergency lights. I focus on the pile of bodies near the door, watching and waiting until I see it move. My hands search the ground for the baton I had earlier, finding nothing but sticky wetness for my effort. I know it’s blood and I try to ignore it as I continue to stare at the moving pile.
I finally grip it, holding it to my chest, and try to decide what I should do next.
“H . . . help.” The voice is quiet, but I hear it. A cough and splutter in the darkness and then again: “Help me.”
I don’t recognize the voice; it could be a prisoner, it could be a guard. Right now I don’t really care, to be honest. I just want things to go back to normal—whatever ‘normal’ may be.
“Who’s there?” I ask quietly. I’m not afraid to die, especially now that I have nothing to live for.
Coughing. “Help . . . me, Philips . . .” More coughing. “Officer Philips.”
I know he paused on the word officer, probably wondering if I’m going to kill him but then realizing that he’s screwed either way and I’m his only bet of getting out of here alive. I don’t recognize his name or his voice, so either he’s new here or he’s not from this wing.
“Are any more of those—things in here?” I ask, feeling strength returning to my limbs. I need to get up on my feet. I need to get out of here and get to my son.
“No, I think you killed the last one. I have a flashlight on my belt and a radio, but I can’t get to it.” He coughs again, sucking in deep breaths to steady himself.
I crawl over to him, not wanting to stand and look in that room and see Ben quite yet. I also don’t want to attract any more attention from those things.
I reach a pile of bodies, but can’t make out who’s who and what’s what. My hand fumbles in the dark, touching and feeling things I don’t want to think about—wet, cold, sticky things—and then teeth. They’re unmoving, but the contact with them makes me jump and I pull my hand back. A hand reaches out and grabs my sleeve and I punch whatever and whoever it is as hard as I can, scrambling backwards and away from the moving pile.
I hear a shout of pain from the guard. “It’s me,” he cries out, groaning.
“Shit,” I say and go back to the pile. “Sorry.” I begin pulling things out of the way, things I don’t want my brain to categorize but it does anyway: an arm, a leg, a body, something long and slimy spilling out and making a wet, sucking sound. A hand reaches out and touches me again, and it takes all my control not to slam my fist into it.
“It’s me.” Philips’s voice again. His fingers squeeze my hand and I pull him free of the pile, kicking away the rest of whatever was stacked on top of him, and drag him toward the doorway.
“What were you doing under all that?” I ask, disgusted.
“Hiding in plain sight,” he replies.
I finally stand, pulling him up with me. He groans loudly and I chance a look behind at the visitors’ room, seeing movement, but thankfully nothing is fully visible. I turn and drag Philips with me out of the room and into the hallway. I don’t realize how much the room stinks of death until I breathe in the cold air of the prison hallway. I take great gulps of it as we stagger together down the hallway silently. I need to get us somewhere safe; I need to get us help. But where is ‘safe’ in a prison overrun with . . . sick people, and who is still alive to help either of us?
Five.
I grab the flashlight from his belt and shine it in front of us, lighting our path. I can’t see any blood on the ground or walls, thankfully. He leans into me and I take the brunt of his weight, half dragging him along.
“There’s a guard station at the end of this hallway, we can go through . . .” cough, splutter, “. . . there and get to the control room.” He groans.
Seems as good a plan as any. From the control room we can check out the rest of the prison, see if anyone else is alive, and try to call for help. As we stagger down the corridor he continues to stumble but I keep him upright, his head propped on my shoulder.
“I’ve got you, man.” I say repeatedly to him.
We reach the room and I lean him against the wall and take the set of keys he hands me. He holds out a small electronic key card to
scan across the door, and my heart stops when I flash it in front of the box and it lights up red.
“Wipe it—” cough, splutter, “—clean, the scanner ain’t so good.” He takes a deep breath. I can tell he’s still bleeding but the corridors are too dark to see where from.
I wipe the key card across my pants and curse. My pants are covered in both wet and dried blood. I rub it across the front of my shirt and try it again, this time getting a satisfying click and a green light for my reward, and I hear the locks in the door sliding out of place. At least I know that the electricity is still on in some parts of the prison.
I grab Philips and lean him against me again. “Come on, man, you can sit your lazy ass down in here.”
He laughs as I push open the door, both of us feeling temporarily blinded by the lights as hands grab me, pulling Philips free from my grip, and shouting ensues.
“Down, down, down!” A Remington shotgun is thrust into my face, and I throw myself to the ground, hands behind my head without question.
These guards aren’t from the immediate prison, judging by their getup, and the only reason they would be inside with shotguns is because the exterior of the prison has been breached. They won’t take any fucking around and arguing, no matter that I just saved their friend here.
The end of the shotgun is pressed painfully into my back, but I don’t take any notice of it as I press my face to the cold floor. Philips speaks up on my account.
“He’s okay, boys.”
“Like fuck he is. He’s a prisoner. Slap some cuffs on him.”
I hear the sound of metal and someone grabs my wrists; however, there’s not a chance in hell I’m going back in cuffs at a time like this, and I struggle on the floor, eventually flipping the guy off me, even as I hear a round being pumped into the chamber.
“Stay down!”
The Dead Saga (Novella Part 1): Odium Origins Page 10