Cell Block Z

by Matt Handle

  Another crack of thunder shook the building as the warden made it to the door and followed the rest of the remaining witnesses out into the hallway that separated the Death House from the main cell block. In his rush to escape, the warden didn’t even think to close the heavy door behind him. All he could focus on in his current frantic state was getting away from the walking horror that had just killed one of his guards and was now making dinner out of one of the most powerful men to ever set foot in the facility.

  The last of his fellow survivors disappeared through the doorway that led outside toward the parking lot. The warden was tempted to follow them. But here, out of sight of the monster and the horrors he’d just witnessed, the warden’s sense of duty took hold of him. The guards at the gate could see those people safely out. Right now his job was to warn the staff that remained inside the building. Then he needed to get to the gun cabinet in his office and break out the artillery. Staff was prohibited from carrying firearms inside the prison buildings, but this wasn’t a normal situation. If the monster that used to be Billy Mobley went outside, one of the watch tower guards would probably gun him down. They were sharpshooters and well trained. However, if he remained inside, the warden needed to make sure his crew was ready.

  When he made it to the interior door that led into the cell block, the warden reached for the keychain that always hung from his belt loop. And his fingers came up empty. He looked dumbly down at his hip and realized his keys were gone. They must have gotten pulled off in his mad dash to avoid Mobley. With dawning terror, he realized he’d need to go back inside the Death House to retrieve them. The only other option was to run outside and hope he could get a few of his sharpshooters down here before the monster came after him.

  He processed this logic in mere seconds, but as he started back toward the other set of doors, Graxim stepped into the hall, blocking his way. But it wasn’t really Graxim anymore. The ex-senator was now soaked in blood from chin to waist. All that existed above his chin was a bloody pulp-covered skull and one dangling eyeball, the sclera just as red as Mobley’s had been. The creature opened what was left of its mouth and uttered a sound that was something between a grunt and a hiss. Then it lurched forward, picking up speed as it came toward the warden.

  The warden turned to run, but of course there was no place to go. The only thing behind him was six feet of hallway and a locked door. He beat on the door, desperate to avoid being eaten alive, hoping that someone, somehow would rescue him. When Graxim’s hands grabbed hold of the back of his head, he voiced one agonized shriek and then was silenced as the politician-turned-undead bit into his neck and severed his jugular.

  The thunder and rain were loud, but not loud enough to mask what sounded like a scream coming from beyond the door that led to the Death House. Jesse craned his neck as he tried to see what might be going on. Surely that wasn’t Mobley?

  Jesse looked at the other cell windows and saw that his fellow inmates were all gawking in that direction too. Peterson had one cheek pressed up against the glass and Chavez had tears streaming down his face. The little Mexican was known to be the block’s resident sissy. Whenever he didn’t have his lipsticked mouth wrapped around some other inmate’s cock, he had it open and yapping about whatever the Row’s latest gossip might be. Everyone called him Chatty Cathy and since March, all Cathy talked about was poor Billy Mobley and how sad Cathy was that the big black man wouldn’t be around much longer. Jesse figured Cathy was probably a little heartbroken. It was no secret that he slobbed Billy’s knob on a regular basis and Jesse had seen Mobley in the showers often enough to know if it was pole you craved, Billy packed more of it than any other man on the block. The big guy liked to brag that sissies just couldn’t get enough Mississippi black snake in them. Right now Jesse was pretty sure Cathy’s desire had turned to terror based on the look of his face.

  Jesse’s own view didn’t provide him a wide enough angle to see the door at the end of the hall’s length, but he knew someone would walk by eventually. The guards always made their rounds. Maybe one of them would tell him something if he caught him in the right mood.

  He was pondering which of the guards might be on duty when he heard the first pounding noise come from the direction of the Death House’s door. The pounding was violent and insistent, not unlike the thunder, but clearly coming from inside the building. When it stopped, he held his breath without thinking about it. Seconds later, the pounding started again, now even louder. Someone from one of the other cells shouted “Shut the Hell up!” but the noise only got worse.

  Jesse inched away from the small window and let out a long, steadying breath. He needed to chill out. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t his problem. Mobley was a dead man, but here inside these four cramped walls, Jesse was safe and well even if his years might be numbered. Whose aren’t? he thought darkly.

  The pounding suddenly ended in a heavy crash that echoed down the hall and was followed by an eerie silence. Jesse pressed his face against the reinforced glass again and tried to see what was going on. For a half a minute, there was nothing. The hall was still empty. Then Billy appeared. At least, Jesse thought it used to be Billy. Whatever it was, it lumbered slowly, dragging its feet as it went. What the fuck, he thought. They turned you into a goddamned zombie?

  When the monster reached Jesse’s door, it stopped and slowly rotated its head until its vacant red eyes were staring directly into Jesse’s window. It stood there for a minute, almost as if it had read his thoughts and then it started forward again. As it passed, two more creatures followed in its wake. Jesse didn’t recognize the first one, some faceless fright-mask in a blood-soaked three-piece suit, but he gasped at the second. It was the warden, a man Jesse had developed a deep-seated hate for over the past several years. The warden was a self-serving piece of shit. Or at least he had been. Now he looked as dead as the two things that walked in front of him. His throat was ripped open, his neck nearly torn from his shoulders. His formerly comb-overed, fat head lolled sideways like a jack-in-the-box on a ruined spring. Neither the warden nor the other monster spared him a glance. They just followed Billy like mindless thralls.

  Jesse’s eyes were locked on the hallway, his hands pressed against the door as he tried to stay calm and process what he’d just seen. Those are fucking zombies, dude. No bullshit. Walking dead men right outside my cell.

  This horrific realization was still working its way through Jesse’s head when Money’s shrill voice rang out from his cell four doors down. “What the Hell, man! Now we got zombies all up in here? That shit ain’t right!”

  Then the loudest peal of thunder yet cracked overhead and everything went dark. Someone screamed. Jesse thought it might have been Chatty Cathy but it was hard to tell. All he could see was pitch black. He waited, his feet rooted in place, his face still just inches from the glass and then the lights came back on. Actually, he realized, it wasn’t all the lights. It was only the emergency ones. He knew from past outages that meant the generator had kicked in but the main power was still down.

  He kept listening for gun shots, sure that the guards would put down the zombies as soon as they got within sight. But one minute stretched into five. And then ten. The sound that followed wasn’t gunfire, but something much more chilling. The lock on Jesse’s cell door clicked open as did every other lock on the block simultaneously. The heavy door swung open silently, inviting Jesse to step outside unguarded for the first time in five years. He hesitated. Somewhere out there was a trio of zombies that looked like they might be hungry for more. On the other hand, if he remained where he was, he’d just be waiting for them to find him. Even if they didn’t, someday a set of needles would.

  Gathering his courage, Jesse walked outside his cell and looked up and down the hall. Most of his fellow Rowers were doing the same. Money was walking toward him, in the opposite direction of the three zombies they’d just seen go by.

  “You see that shit?” he asked, seemingly to no one in particular. “I’m
out of here, ya’ll. I’ll raise my hands up high and keep walkin’ until one of them guards shows up and takes me some place safe. I don’t know about you, but I ain’t gonna get killed by no Billy Zombie and Friends. No fuckin’ way!”

  Sam stood in front of his open cell door and looked scornfully at the scared bookie. “You just trying to get out of paying those bets.”

  Money stopped for a minute and looked at Sam incredulously. “Those bets? You gonna check to see if Billy shit his pants, cuz I sure as Hell ain’t. The only one shitting his pants around here is gonna be me if those things show back up and I’m still standing around here jawing with you. I gots to go!”

  Then Money got moving again, heading in the direction of the now wide open doorway to the Death House. The door hung drunkenly off the one hinge that had survived the zombies’ attack.

  Pike wandered down the hall and stopped beside Jesse before motioning at Money’s retreating back. “You don’t see that every day, do you?”

  “What?” Jesse asked. “Zombies hunting the halls of Death Row?”

  Pike smiled. “That too, but I was referring to a convict running toward the Death House in fear for his life instead of the opposite direction.”

  “You got a better idea?” Jesse asked.

  “The guards might be outside somewhere and willing to shuttle us into one of the other blocks until this thing gets resolved, but do you want to take that chance? They might just as well shoot us all dead for trying to escape,” he said.

  Several of the surrounding inmates stepped closer to better listen to the conversation and Sam the Slam spoke up when Pike was finished.

  “I’d rather try to escape than get eaten by one of them zombies,” he argued. “If we all went up the fence at the same time, some of us are bound to make it.”

  Pike shook his head. “Those fences are topped with razor wire and powered by the generators. It’s part of the emergency backup plan. Anyone that grabs hold of that fence, in the rain no less, will be electrocuted surer than if they hauled the electric chair back out of its closet. And if they somehow survived that, they’d be cut to ribbons by the wire at the top. Like it or not, none of us is leaving.”

  Jesse had heard enough. “You still haven’t answered my question,” he said. “If you’ve got a better idea, let’s hear it.”

  By now Chatty Cathy, Peterson, and most of the other inmates had joined them.

  “I say we head in the same direction as the monsters did,” Pike stated with the sort of confidence Jesse bet he used to use in the boardroom. “If any of the guards are still alive, they’ll be in their offices or break room. They probably have a weapons room somewhere up there as well. There will be telephones and extra sets of keys. If all else fails, we can just follow the internal doors and hallways into the next cell block. It accomplishes the same thing as walking outside without the risk of being shot in the dark.”

  “It also means we might run into Billy,” Cathy piped in. Jesse saw that the diminutive Mexican looked petrified. His hair was a disheveled mess and his homemade mascara was running.

  “True,” Pike countered. “But there’s power in numbers. If we all go together, we have a better chance of surviving even if it does turn into a fight.”

  By now, all dozen of the remaining inmates had circled around Pike and Jesse. They all looked at each other for a second as they tried to decide what to do. Then a blood-curdling scream came from the Death House. It was Money. Or it had been anyway. The scream only lasted a few seconds and then it was replaced with silence. Each of them turned to look in the direction that the fast-talking bookie had disappeared. At first, all they saw was the busted doorframe and the faint light coming from beyond it. Then a figure was silhouetted in that frame. It was a twisted, hunched over figure that didn’t look much like the now late Nate Cash at all. Seconds later, the figure was limping toward them, growing more distinct with every labored step.

  Each of the inmates stared at the approaching figure with a growing sense of dread. All of them hoped it was Money, injured but alive, coming to tell them what lay past the broken door. But none of them believed that hope was real. Once the figure made it half way to them, they knew it wasn’t Money. It wasn’t even an undead Money. Whoever it was, they couldn’t make out the details of his face. The creature got even closer and suddenly it dawned on Jesse that it was wearing a guard uniform. It was Alvarez, or had been not very long ago. The zombie’s neck had been broken so badly that its head was turned around backward. The reason they couldn’t see its face was because they were staring at the blood-matted hair on the back of its head.

  “Run!” Cathy screeched and suddenly the horrified paralysis that had overcome all of them was broken. They took off away from the advancing zombie like a pack of spooked gazelles running from a stalking lion. Even the normally cool and collected Pike kept up with the group as they sprinted down the corridor.

  Once they passed the showers and then the cafeteria, they came to the main hall. Jesse motioned for the others to stop. With only a few of the overheads powered by the generator, the big space was dim and full of shadows along the walls. Several of the inmates were breathing heavily and Sam looked like he was about to keel over. Jesse thought the big man’s extra hundred pounds of body weight probably had his heart doing double-time.

  “Just hold up a minute,” Jesse whispered as he tried to catch his breath. He was in better shape than most, but 20+ years of smoking topped by spending the last five years in captivity hadn’t done him any favors. “We don’t know where the other zombies are. Alvarez isn’t going to catch up for a few minutes. Let’s try to get our shit together.”

  Sam leaned over, holding his knees as he gulped in air while Cathy leaned against the wall wringing his hands and trying not to cry again. Most of the others just looked back and forth between the dark space in front of them and the long corridor at their backs that still contained the undead guard with the twist-off head.

  “I believe we have two choices,” Pike said calmly to Jesse once they’d rested for a minute. Even after running through the prison, the man didn’t have a hair out of place. Jesse didn’t think he’d even broken a sweat. “We might go left and work our way down the main corridor to the front doors or we can go right and try the administrative offices.”

  “I vote we hit the front doors and get the Hell out of here,” Peterson piped in. Jesse didn’t know Ed Peterson as well as he knew some of the other inmates, but he knew the mild-looking man had murdered his three kids while he made his ex-wife watch a dozen or so years ago. As far as Jesse was concerned, Peterson getting eaten by zombies wouldn’t be too big of a loss.

  “The chances of the doors being unlocked are slim to none,” Pike stated. “I agree it is probably worth checking on the off-chance one of the guards escaped and left them open on his way out, but I wouldn’t recommend going empty-handed. That’s a lot of space to cross without much cover.”

  “So you still think we look for weapons,” Jesse concluded.

  Pike nodded. “It would seem the most prudent course.”

  “I don’t know, man,” Sam wheezed, his head still down near his knees. “The more time we spend in here, the better chance we run into Billy or the warden.”

  “Who’s the other dead guy, anyway?” Jesse asked. “Anyone know?”

  “That would be the former state senator,” Pike answered. “He was here to watch Mister Mobley put to death for killing his daughter.”

  “And now they’re running around together like old undead pals,” Jesse said.

  Pike shrugged. “It would seem zombies aren’t any more particular about the company they keep than they are about what they eat.”

  Chatty Cathy groaned and then puked all over the floor.

  Jesse growled, “Christ, Cathy. Lock it up. This is no time to be a pussy.”

  Cathy wiped his mouth and gave Jesse a reproachful look but didn’t say a word.

  Jesse took another look around the cavernous spac
e in front of them and then put a hand on Sam’s meaty shoulder. “I say we go with Pike’s plan. The offices are a shorter walk than the front doors and if there are any guns in there, we could use them. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like the idea of taking on those things with nothing but my bare hands.”

  Peterson clearly wasn’t convinced. “You want to go AWAY from the exit?” he asked.

  Jesse regarded him coolly. “That’s what I said.”

  “You do what you want, I’m going straight for the doors,” Peterson replied defiantly. “If you get yourselves killed, don’t blame me.”

  “I’m going with you,” one of the inmates spoke up. Jesse couldn’t put a name to the face, but he was an older black man that he’d seen hanging around Money once in a while. They’d never spoken.

  “Anybody else?” Peterson asked as he looked around at the remaining ten inmates that hadn’t picked a side yet. Most of them kept their eyes focused on the floor. None of them said a word.

  “Suit yourselves,” Peterson groused then he focused his attention on his only follower. “Let’s move. The sooner we get out of this place, the better.”

  Jesse, Pike, and the others watched as Peterson and his partner took off down the main hall and into the shadows beyond. They waited for any sign that the pair had either run into the zombies or found the doors on the far end to be open but after a minute of nothing, Pike broke the silence. “We need to go. Alvarez can’t be too much further behind.”

  Jesse nodded in agreement and then the twelve of them started down the hallway to the right. Just as they reached an open doorway that appeared to lead to the guard’s locker room, the clang of something small but metallic hitting the floor sounded from inside. All dozen of them stopped dead in their tracks. Jesse and Pike cautiously stepped close to the threshold and peered into the gloom inside. The room looked like it was fairly large, but details were tough to make out. Only a single flickering fluorescent light in the ceiling was still working. They could see rows of tall lockers that lined the walls and at least one other row that stood in the center of the room, but most of the interior space was draped in shadow. Jesse took a step inside before Sam grabbed a handful of fabric on the back of his shirt and gave it a hard tug.