In The Falling Light
Page 30
“She was my baby!” she screamed.
Below, Kelvin Finch pressed his face against the food slot. “You’re crazy, you bitch!”
Dean Frye ran, the echoes of his boots following him. Ahead of him, a light followed by a pair of running men appeared, Pico and Moore from the PC.
“What are you guys doing?” he demanded. “Why aren’t you at your post?”
Moore, overweight and breathing hard from the exertion, bent over and put his hands on his knees, unable to speak. Pico was puffing too, but between breathes managed, “Sgt. Mendez relieved us. Told us to report to you at the arsenal.”
In the distance behind them came the ghostly boom of a shotgun.
Dean gritted his teeth, jerking a thumb. “Get moving, gear up and find the lieutenant.” Without waiting for a response, he ran past them.
Tommy Lee Halsey also tried hiding under his bunk. It didn’t save him. Anthony Braccio, a car mechanic who violated his wife’s restraining order and beat and murdered both her and their daughter, stayed in the near corner and tried the reason with the murderous sergeant. It took a flashbang to get him out of the corner, and then the Mossberg spoke.
Carla’s head was ringing and she had to grip the railing as she stumbled down the stairs from the upper tier, pausing at the bottom to regain her balance before feeding fresh rounds into the shotgun.
“Halfway there, Finch,” she yelled, her fingers fumbling a shell and dropping it. No matter, she had plenty.
“You’re out of your fucking mind!” Finch screamed from the other end of the block. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!”
“You remember number seven. I stood there while you told HBO how much fun you had with my little girl. I read your letters a thousand times.” She chambered a round. “You made me think there was some chance, made me think she was still alive even after you had her in the ground.” Carla moved to the first cell. Sampson Jeffries; a hospital orderly who over the course of a year molested three children in a terminal ward before smothering them with their pillows. He was tucked in a corner.
“Crazy bitch. They’re gonna kill you!”
Carla used a flashbang, but caught a fair amount of it herself. She managed to open the cell door, but then fell to her knees in the entrance, her head spinning and her vision a tight little cone. Sampson Jeffries moaned on the floor nearby, trying to climb to his hands and knees.
Dean Frye reached the outer door to the bubble and used the manual release to pull it open, quickly moving to the inner door. He had heard more shooting, recognized the sound of the grenades, and now in the dimness of the emergency lights beyond he could see Carla lying in the open cell doorway on the first level at the far right.
The door wouldn’t open. He heaved against it, felt a little play, but it was jammed.
“Carla!” he shouted through the glass, banging a fist against it to get her attention. “Carla, stop! Stop this!”
Carla got to her hands and knees as Sampson Jeffries got to his feet. He made a growling noise and kicked her, landing a bare foot in her ribs before stumbling, still dazed from the blast, waving his arms to keep his balance. Carla grunted and fell onto her side, seeing the big man looming over her. She clawed the 9mm automatic from her hip holster and fired six rounds at a range of three feet. Two whined off the cement wall behind him, but four found their mark, slamming into flesh. From the low angle, one caught Jeffries under the chin, and blew out through the top of his head.
Her head felt like it was filled with wet cotton, and she shook it as she got to her feet, recovered her shotgun and staggering to the next cell.
“How do you feel, Finch?” Her own voice sounded far away. “Helpless? Knowing no one is coming to save you?”
At the other end, Finch shrieked an animal noise out into the common area.
“That was how Anita felt,” Carla called. “Helpless. Frightened. She couldn’t understand any of it.”
“Crazy bitch! Crazy bitch! Crazy bitch! Heeeelp!”
Edward Quince; abducted a little boy from a church picnic, and after he was done with him, pushed him off the top of a construction site. Quince tried to block the food slot with his mattress as Tyrone Lawrence had done. The Mossberg blew apart both the mattress and Edward Quince.
“All she knew was fear, Finch! All she knew was that she wanted her Mommy, and was being hurt by a monster.” They were all monsters in here. Beyond serving her purpose of terrorizing Kelvin Finch, Carla had long ago decided that they all needed to die.
The King was wailing, a high, hysterical sound. “It’s not my fault! I’m sick! I can’t help it!” His fists thudded against his cell door. “She loved me! She loved me and she cried for you at the end!”
Carla pumped another round into the Mossberg, her teeth clenched so tight she thought they might crack, and took a step towards his cell and finish it. But then she moved to the next door. “Be right with you, Finch.”
Larry Colt; after online pedophile sites no longer gave him the kick he needed, he snatched a little girl from a mall and raped her in his trailer for two days before chopping her up – as well as his own mother – and burying her in the back yard. Another flashbang was needed to get his out of his corner, but this time Carla was more cautious, stepping well back and covering up before the blast. Larry actually tried to pick up the grenade before it detonated, and when it did, it blew his fingers off. He was curled in a fetal position on the floor, choking and pressing his bloody stumps to the sides of his head when Carla rolled the door open. She put the shotgun’s muzzle against his upper lip and fired.
Dean Frye roared in frustration as he threw his weight against the door, again and again, feeling it give a little with each yank. “Carla, stop!” he shouted through the glass. Stop, honey, stop!”
“Death is coming for you, Finch. Can you feel it?”
Lamar Templeton; caught with a murdered infant. A flashbang put him on the floor, and the Mossberg sent him to hell.
Carla’s face was wet with tears. “She was my baby, Finch. She had a life and you took it away. You made her die in fear.” She pumped a new round. “And I’m coming for you.”
Kelvin Finch’s wails turned to shrieking sobs for help.
Ruben Marquis; a skinny, former accountant with thick glasses, who once took vacations to Southeast Asia in order to purchase and use young boys. Back in the U.S. he grabbed a neighbor’s five-year-old in his apartment building, sexually asphyxiating him. Marquis was found crying over the body. Now he was crying again, just sitting on his bunk with his face in his hands.
Carla cut him down without a word.
“Almost done, Finch,” she called, only one door down from his cell. “Almost there.”
The king was screaming himself hoarse.
“Shut the fuck up!” Linus James bellowed through the adjacent food slot. “Sergeant! Hey Sergeant! It’s Finch you want, I ain’t did nothing to your little girl.”
Carla walked to his cell.
“Go on now, blow that motherfucker away and leave old Linus alone. He’s the one done it.” Linus stared at her through the slot, his eyes rolling like a panicky horse. “Please, Sergeant, go on finish that sick motherfucker.”
Carla thrust the Mossberg through the slot. Linus James squealed and tried to run the eight feet to the far end of his cell. The Mossberg blew his spine out through his belly, and painted the wall.
“How does it feel, Finch?” she said softly, feeding shells into the shotgun with little clicks. Her fingers moved slowly. She was so very tired.
Dean gave a tremendous heave, his muscles straining and face darkening to the point he feared he would pop a blood vessel. With a grinding squeak the wedge slid free and the door rolled open.
“Carla!” He ran towards her across the common room.
She approached the King’s cell.
“Carla, stop right there!” Dean slid to a stop and put his own shotgun to his shoulder, aiming it at his friend.
S
he paused and looked at him, her eyes sunken in a drawn face. “He took away my baby, Dean.”
“I know he did, honey.” The muzzle of his shotgun wavered. “But not this. You have to stop.” What was he doing! He loved her, and she was doing what every CO had fantasized about in every prison in the world. A final accounting for the dead and destroyed. Was he going to shoot this woman, who by every definition of the word was putting justice back into the justice system?
Still he didn’t lower the shotgun.
She looked at him a moment longer, gave him a sad smile, and turned towards the King’s door.
“Carla, no!”
She put the Mossberg’s muzzle to the food slot.
From twenty feet away Dean fired. The double-aught buckshot hit her in the back and shoulder, throwing her forward into the cell door. Her Mossberg fell with a rattle and she slid to the floor, face down. Dean ran to her, dropping his own weapon and falling to his knees beside her, turning her over. Even in the shadows from the emergency light he could see her face was gray, her eyes distant and blinking slowly.
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” he said, cradling her head as the tears came. What had he done? She choked and tried to say something, but it only came out as a wheeze. Then she was gone.
“Goddamn! Thanks, man, you got here just in time!” Kelvin Finch pressed his face to the food slot, turning his head so he could see the fallen sergeant. He laughed, a shaky, nervous sound. “That was one crazy bitch.”
Dean said nothing.
Finch, the terror over, started talking from the adrenalin. “Man, she got ‘em all, didn’t she? Every chickenhawk in here, dead as dead can be! Gonna be hell to pay. Crazy bitch. How’d she get in here, anyway? Man, I think I’m gonna throw up.”
Dean looked down at the woman he had just killed, eyes wet, feeling sick inside, and empty as well. He suddenly understood some of what she must have felt over those long years, that dead void inside. He brushed the hair away from her face. Sleep now.
“They should give you a medal, Sergeant. You saved my ass, you really did! I don’t mind telling you, I thought she was gonna get me.”
Dean stood up with Carla’s Mossberg in his hand, and he turned, shoving the barrel into the food slot and against Kelvin Finch’s face. “She did.”
The King had a tenth of a second to gasp before the blast took his head off. Dean set the weapon back on the floor beside Carla, knelt down and took her in his arms, rocking her slowly as he wept.
A touch of cool air crossed his neck, but he barely noticed. Behind him, a shade in the shape of a little girl was joined by that of a woman. They joined hands, and faded.
SOON TO BE RELEASED
OMEGA DAYS
&
A JUDGE FROM SALEM
by
John L. Campbell
photo by Linda Campbell
Mr. Campbell is the author of Red Circus: A Dark Collection, his first full-length volume of short horror and suspense, and The Mangroves, a novella of terror based upon actual events. His short fiction has appeared in anthologies, print and online literary and small circulation magazines, and his non-fiction essay series on Life and Relationships, A Dad’s Perspective, debuted online in 2012. He is the co-author of the screenplay Silver Arrow, and the Shadow Empyre RPG series. Mr. Campbell lives in Connecticut with his family. Visit the author at www.johnlcampbell.com