Shadows Burned In

by Chris Pourteau

  Kitts, the plan’s mastermind, thought he might just head back to Hampshire, that little shithole of a town that had produced him, maybe start over there. Start over? The thought made him laugh. Start over at sixty-eight? But he had distant relatives there that loved nothing more than to hear about the wilder exploits of his younger days, and they’d feed and house him in exchange for the stories. He could live the rest of his life on the banks of the Brazos River in relative obscurity.

  Stu, on the other hand, planned to head west to La Grange and the Texas Czechs he’d grown up with. He hadn’t missed the family feeling of living there until it was gone, he told Kitts.

  Yeah, whatever, thought Kitts. Just keep drawing.

  Stu was pretty good, he had to admit. What God had cut out of Stu’s head, He seemed to have stuffed into his eyes and hands. The pictures he turned out were something worth looking at.

  It don’t matter, thought Kitts. None of it matters. We’re gettin outta here.

  “That was real smart the way you thought up how to dye our clothes,” Stu said. “Real smart.”

  Kitts shook the stained water off the green marker. “Next,” he said. Stu handed him a red one. “It ain’t the clothes I’m worried about,” said Kitts. He pointed to his neck. “It’s this.” He tapped the skin below his ear.

  The transponder felt like a hard rock deposit under his skin. A lithium-powered computer chip the size of a small wristwatch battery was inserted into each new prisoner’s neck. It kept track of vital signs and fed the monitoring data back to the prison’s central tracking system.

  The company that made the devices had sold them to the legislature with the PR boost that they made it possible for the prison doctor to more easily diagnose inmates’ medical problems. That might be the case, but Kitts knew their real purpose. All the prisoners did. They called them “tattlers.” The transponders sent out a steady, unique locator signal, confirming every prisoner’s whereabouts twenty-four hours a day. Guards could trigger the built-in electric stun at any time, minimizing the danger to prison personnel during an emergency and maximizing the deterrence to inmates who thought about creating one.

  “Yeah, dees tangs is de devil all right,” said Stu.

  “Shut up and draw.”

  Stu looked wounded for a moment, but Kitts didn’t care. He was turning his brain on the last puzzle, the final obstacle to their escape. How to get the goddamned thing out. Tattlers had been in use for nearly a decade now, and prisons had come to rely heavily on them. Occasionally a guard would walk up and down the cellblock to check on the inmates in their bunks in the wee hours of the morning, but by and large, prisoners were left to themselves during lockdown. And that’s when Kitts and Stu made their dye.

  Kitts knew the prison doctor implanted and extracted the tattlers. When necessary, the guards used a barcode device—called “the switcher” by inmates—that could turn them on and off. If the units were extracted without first being disarmed by the switcher, a prison-wide alarm would sound. The computer would know exactly which prisoner had set it off because each transponder was assigned a unique number. If an inmate attempted an escape, the transponder sent a charge of electricity like a mini-stun gun to the back of the skull as soon as the inmate crossed the prison’s perimeter. Kitts had heard of other prisoners standing at the fence and putting their hands behind their neck in a mockery of standard police procedure. They weren’t giving up; they were using a broken bottle to cut the tattler out before making a break. But the screws had thought of that too. If the tattler wasn’t kept at standard body temperature, an alarm sounded. It usually took about ten seconds for an active, extracted tattler to set off the facility-wide squawk box. An inmate wouldn’t get fifty feet beyond the first fence, not even close to the second, before the whole prison was alerted. Kitts had thought about stealing a switcher from a guard, but try that and he might as well ask to be shot straight out. Besides, he’d have no idea how to use it once he had it. So that brought it down to one simple fact: The tattler had to come out . . . without setting off the alarm.

  “Kitts,” mouthed Stu quietly, breaking the other’s concentration. Kitts made ready to snap at him, call him a moron—

  “Guard, man,” mouthed Stu, already putting the markers quietly back in the cigar box.

  As Stu quietly scrambled to hide his latest masterpiece and the markers under his bunk, Kitts did the same with his bucket of dye, careful not to rush it and risk sloshing water everywhere. With practiced precision, both were in their bunks with only a squeak or two of sneakers on cement floor. Kitts slowed his breathing, the rise and fall of his blanket becoming restive. They heard the echo of the guard’s boots on the floor, walking leisurely up the block. Occasionally, The Man spot-checked the prisoners, transponders or no, and tonight was one of those nights. The guard stopped outside their cell, shone the flashlight in.

  It’s a big fucking rat, you dickhead, Kitts thought at the guard. That’s all you heard.

  The guard mumbled something incoherent, flicked the light around once more, and moved on. Kitts lay there while he walked, worried Stu would freak out and give them away. But the retard had actually saved him, had to give him that.

  Figuring out how to get rid of the tattler while you’ve got a baton shoved up your ass ain’t worth shit, dumbass, he thought. Be more careful next time.

  He turned his mind on that problem again while the guard began his return patrol. The slow clock – clock – clock of his boots on the cement marked time like molasses curing in a Mason jar. At some point Kitts started counting the bootfalls of the guard as they fell on the block floor. Soon the sound spiraled him down into sleep.

  “Dunk it,” said Kitts.

  He watched as Stu unfolded the overalls they’d pilfered from the laundry room that morning, carefully laying them in the cloudy dye, pushing them an inch at a time below the surface until they were soaked, then feeding the next portion of material, as if through a sewing machine. “Don’t waste the water,” hissed Kitts. Stu shook his head, mouthing, “No, no, no.” He folded the treated cloth back over the bucket to catch whatever runoff there might be from the soaked overalls. Soon enough they were soaking wet in magic marker ink.

  “Okay, we’ll let them soak overnight,” said Kitts. “Be sure and put them far under your bunk, away from the slightest ray of light, Stu. We’re beyond innocent explanations now. They find that bucket, they know we’re up to something, understand?”

  Stu nodded as he wedged the overalls down in the bucket, then repeated the entire process for Kitts’s suit while Kitts kept an ear cocked. Midnight rounds would begin soon. Kitts had made Stu dye his own suit first, in case something went wrong with the dying process. Kitts wore a size large because of his “stature and thickness,” he liked to say. Stu wore a medium, and that seemed big on him. In any case, it looked like the dye job was working. But they’d know for sure after the suits dried.

  “Patches?”

  “Right here,” said Stu, smiling. As part of his homosexual façade, Stu had taken up cross-stitching, and he’d managed to conceal a single needle and enough black thread for stitching on two decently faked Mr. Goodwrench patches. Kitts had told him that once they were beyond the wall, with a little luck they’d get away with the charade long enough to boost a car and lie low until the manhunt was over.

  “All right, then,” Kitts said. “That’s tomorrow night.”

  Stu had a goofy grin on his face, like a child seeing his parents wrap up the presents on Christmas Eve.

  Kitts heard the slow clock – clock – clock of the guard’s boots at the far end of the block. Panic shot down his spine. Butterflies invaded his bowels.

  “Dey early,” whispered Stu, but a little too loudly.

  Kitts turned on him, raised a hand, then realized the guard might hear. He settled for barking, “In your bunk, now.”

  It must’ve been a slow night. No sooner were they settled, had they had time to breathe once, twice, than the boots passed
their cell.

  Kitts got no sleep. The pot was too close to boiling.

  “God it hurts,” Stu almost screamed. “It feels like my guts is acid!”

  “What the hell’d he eat?” asked Thompson, the guard on duty the next night.

  “Same thing’s everybody else,” Kitts answered, concern cracking his voice. “Come on, Wes, do somethin for him.”

  “Ohhhhh.”

  “Do what?”

  “I don’t know!” Kitts tried his best to sound like a concerned wife. Though who was the husband and who was the wife, the guards often debated, was hard to tell.

  “Ahhhhhh, Jesus, let me die, please.”

  Wes The Guard looked down at the writhing prisoner, heard others begin to stir in their bunks. “All right, come on,” he said reluctantly. He thought he probably ought to call for backup, but he was getting tired of the little one’s wailing. “I’ll take you down to the infirmary,” he said to Stu.

  “Thank ye, Jesus,” said Stu, sweat popping out on his forehead.

  “I gotta go,” said Kitts, as if it weren’t open for debate.

  “Can’t do that, Kitts,” said Thompson. “It’s against regs. You ain’t sick.”

  A look of utter defeat spread across Kitts’s face. He kept thinking to himself, Your wife is about to have a baby and they just told you you can’t go with her to the hospital, trying to create the right emotion. “Aw, come on, Wes, he’s my . . . he’s my friend, and this looks serious. I ain’t never seen him like this before, not even with the arthritis. You got to let me go down with him!”

  “Kitts, I—”

  “Oh, please,” cried Kitts, getting down on the floor and mewling as he grabbed Thompson’s pant leg.

  “Ohhhhhh, sweet lord, let’s gooooooo, I need a doctor bad!”

  Jesus, thought Thompson, I hate to see a grown man cry. Even a fag.

  “All right, all right, let’s just go!”

  Other prisoners down the block were starting to make fun of faggy Stu’s moaning and crying ’cause Kitty-cat must’ve gone in too deep this time.

  “I don’t know, Doc,” said Kitts, concern written all over him. “He just doubled over and started screamin.”

  “That’s right,” confirmed Thompson. Even though he hadn’t been there when the pain had started, he felt the need to show he was in charge of the situation. “Just doubled over.”

  “All right, we’ll see what’s going on,” said the groggy doctor. “Unzip your uniform.”

  “Wahh?” Stu’s agonized demeanor faltered a bit. “What’d you say?”

  “I said take off your uniform,” repeated the doctor wearily. It was obvious he begrudged wasting good sleeping time repeating the instruction.

  “Umm.” Stu looked over at Kitts, who gave him the slightest nod of his forehead. “Umm. Okay.”

  He reached up to unzip the prison uniform, while at the same time Kitts got Thompson’s attention. “I really appreciate you lettin me come along, Wes. Nobody else woulda done it.”

  As Stu started to unzip, Thompson turned to look at Kitts. He didn’t know whether to pity the old queen or lead a lynching party and be rid of him. “Kitts, you—”

  “What the . . .” The doctor leaned over Stu to get a better look.

  Thompson turned away from Kitts. “What’s—”

  But Thompson never finished his question. Kitts whacked him over the head with a bedpan. The doctor, who’d been focused on Stu, watched with disbelief as the guard crumpled. Stu came off the table and jumped on the doctor’s back. The two pirouetted once, twice. While Stu and the doctor did their dance, Kitts took the baton off Thompson’s belt and beat the back of the guard’s skull till he heard it crack. Finally, the doctor collapsed as Stu vice-gripped his larynx.

  Then all was perfectly quiet.

  Kitts cocked an ear and listened. No one was coming. Stu had done a good job of choking the doctor into silence, and Thompson hadn’t gotten off so much as a shout. “All right,” he said, no time to waste. “Good-bye prisoner, hello Mr. Goodwrench.”

  He and Stu stripped off their prison whites to reveal the dyed bluish-black overalls beneath. From a distance, and even close-up to the unobservant, they were just two old mechanics more at ease working on cars before all the electronic, satellite-linked gizmos were introduced into them.

  Kitts fumbled around on the dead guard’s belt, found the switcher, and passed it over the back of his neck. He didn’t hear anything like a reassuring click, so he wasn’t sure if the thing was off or not. Knowing he’d gone too far to stop now, he riffled through one of the drawers in the medical cabinet until he found a small scalpel.

  “What you gonna do?” asked Stu.

  Kitts ignored him, touching the tip of the blade gingerly on his finger. It was sharp, all right. Rubbing his thumb over the slightly raised area on the back of his neck, he guided the scalpel until it rested over the tattler.

  “Kitts! What you—”

  “Shaddup!”

  Here it was. Everything on Red 36. Let it ride, Gambler Man.

  He pressed down and began to scrape with the scalpel. He knew the tattler was only a little deeper than a splinter might’ve been. Kitts flinched as he cut. The blade finally scraped metal. He pulled aside one tiny flap of skin and knew the air was getting to it now.

  (how fast does the temperature drop once the air hits the inside of the body)

  He suddenly remembered he wasn’t sure if he’d disarmed the tattler. Hurriedly, Kitts scraped aside a flap of skin on the other side and pushed the scalpel in deeper to pry out the device. The pain became intense, and he felt the tattler give as he pried it out. He looked at it for a moment, then the time clock in his head began to scream at him.

  Only one way to make sure.

  He plunged the scalpel into Thompson’s throat and opened a thin slit of a hole, then forced the tattler in. Closing up the wound, he counted down the seconds until he was sure it wouldn’t go off.

  “Y’know, you coulda just put it in his mouth,” said Stu.

  Kitts turned to him. “Now you.”

  After removing Stu’s tattler and forcing it down the unconscious doctor’s throat, Kitts took a deep breath. As far as the main switchboard knew, both he and Stu were in the infirmary. And until the doctor woke up, that’s all they’d know.

  “Oh, that reminds me,” said Kitts. “Excuse me,” he said politely, pushing his way past Stu. Bending over the doctor, he put aside the scalpel and picked up Thompson’s baton, then systematically bashed in the doctor’s skull with repeated, measured, strained strokes.

  “There now. That’s better.”

  Stu looked on, his jaw dropping. “What’d you do that fer?” he asked. “Doc ain’t never done us no wrong.”

  Kitts looked at him. “And now he never will, neither,” he said. “It’s too late to half-ass this, Stu. We’re all in.”

  “Uhhh—”

  “Be quiet and listen to me,” said Kitts, brandishing the baton so Stu would pay attention. “We’re goin out, and right now. One more thing . . .” Kitts unzipped his faux Mr. Goodwrench uniform and removed folded cardboard. Stu watched as Kitts opened up the little boxy one- and two-foot tubes held together with duct tape. Kitts slipped them on his extremities, then brought out one last untaped portion, which he wrapped around his torso like a girdle. “Stu, I need your help here,” he said.

  “What you doin?” asked Stu in wonder.

  “Just do what I asked you and come over here and help me.” Stu moved toward him, staring at the cardboard on Kitts’s body. “Take this,” said Kitts, handing him the role of duct tape, “and tape me up.”

  “Huh?”

  “Like a package, you . . .” Kitts stopped, took a deep breath. “Like a package, Stu. Just like a package. Wrap the cardboard around my body with a few pieces of tape. Simple as that.”

  Stu still looked confused. “But what’s it for?”

  “It’s for gettin over the razor wire in the fence. It’ll hel
p protect me from that.”

  Stu nodded, tearing a strip of tape off and starting to wrap it around Kitts. Then he stopped, his face dawning like it was the first time anyone had ever switched on the light bulb in a dusty attic. “But I ain’t got none!”

  Kitts winked. “You won’t need it, buddy. Trust me. Once I go over, the wire will be flattened underneath me. I’ll lie on the fence, then you crawl over me. I could only steal enough cardboard for one set without gettin caught. I lie over the fence, let the razor dig into the cardboard, you just up-and-over me, and we’re out!”

  Stu thought about that a minute. “Oh, I see.” Then Stu thought another step, and Kitts almost fell over at the look of gratitude coming over the smaller man’s face. “You’d let me crawl over you, boss, while you hang on dat fence, wid dem lights and guns maybe poppin off an—”

  “Don’t worry about that. If we’re careful, there won’t be no guns poppin off. Trust me, Stu.”

  Stu thought about it another minute. “Yeah, okay. We friends, right? We been plannin this together for near-on thirty years.”

  Kitts smiled. “That’s right, Stu. Now, tape me up afore they wonder why the infirmary light’s on.”

  “Yeah, okay,” said Stu, running the tape around a man he considered to be the greatest criminal mastermind since Al Capone. Meanwhile, Kitts applied shoe polish to his face and hands, then handed the polish to Stu to do the same.

  “All right, buddy, this is it,” Kitts said in his best pep-talk voice. “All those years of planning are about to pay off in spades.”