Pete, meanwhile, was glancing around the room. “I suppose you should tell me what happened,” he said to Marie. “Are we going to have to explain this to some higher-ups?”
“It happened so fast,” Marie said, grimacing. “You hadn’t been gone long when Andersen said to me, ‘It’s funny. You looked familiar to me right from the start. Now that I’ve figured it out, the family resemblance is obvious. Your brother, he was a real piece of work.’ Well, I started yelling at him, because who the hell does he think he is, and that was when Kotter—”
“Sorry, who’s Kotter?”
Swallowing hard, Marie pointed to the dead guard. “That’s when Kotter jumped me. He was trying to take the gun away. He’s the one who got his hands around my throat.”
Pete imagined it and felt sick that he’d left her in there. Marie might know how to use a gun, but that didn’t mean she was trained to handle herself in a hostile situation. I’m a grade-A asshole, but she pushed me too far.
“Then Andersen and Smith got involved. Smith was easy enough to take care of because he already had his feet bound together. Andersen came for the gun. It went off during the struggle and killed Kotter. I kicked Andersen in the balls so hard he may never father another child. Then I stuck him with the tranquilizer. After that, I used Andersen’s sock to shut Smith up. He’s a real talker.”
Smith glared at them.
Pete rifled through the drawers until he came across more zip cuffs, which he used to bind Andersen’s hands and feet together. “That’ll keep him out of commission.” Then he called in a couple of his men to remove the dead body. “And put this idiot,” he said, pointing to Smith, “somewhere else. I’m sick of looking at him.”
“At some point,” Marie said. “We’re going to have to figure out what to do with the dead.”
She was right. In Cellblock One, Pete had caught the unmistakable odor of decomposing bodies. Soon the stench would be unbearable. He supposed with all the snow, they could dump them outside for the time being. The cold would preserve them until graves could be dug.
Though he really hoped that would be someone else’s problem. He could only assume someone in authority would be broadcasting soon. That reminded him to see about the radio. If there was any sort of fairness to the universe, they might already have a message from someone outside the jail.
In the shuffle of comings and goings, Kalbus entered the control room. His eyes went straight to his boss, and then he drew his weapon and aimed it at Pete’s head.
“The fuck is going on?”
“Whoa!” Marie said. “Take it easy. Your boss is not a nice guy.”
Kalbus’ eyes were wide and wild, like an unbroken horse about to be haltered, and Pete was definitely regretting returning the gun to him now.
“Hey,” he said loudly. “You keep your eyes on me. How do you think this is going to play out?”
“Dunno. But this isn’t right. He’s the warden here.”
Though Kalbus was arguing, his arm lowered a good fifteen degrees. Yu, who’d been passing by, snuck up behind him and hit him on the base of his skull with the butt of his M4, and Kalbus dropped like a bag of bricks.
Pete pulled Yu close. “Thanks, buddy. Tell the men to keep their eyes open around the guards. Quietly. You understand?”
“Will do, Lieu.”
“I never thought of it.” Marie sat down heavily, her voice still raspy. “I knew Dean was dirty, but—”
Pete poured her a cup of the ersatz coffee. “Here. It’ll soothe your throat. Don’t worry about it. If the guards were here for any amount of time, there’s a good chance they were working with Andersen. They might not all be bad guys, but that doesn’t mean we can trust them. Better safe than sorry, you get it?”
After he used another pair of zip cuffs on Kalbus, Pete and Yu hauled his unconscious body out of the control room.
Chapter 12
Pete had barely entered the control room when his radio squawked. It was Ryan.
“You’d better come to Two,” he said.
“On our way,” Pete responded.
“I’m going with you this time,” Marie said. “I don’t want to be left alone in here. What if—?”
“What if we don’t come back?” Pete said. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. Tell you what. A couple of my men have leg injuries. I’ll leave them with you. You know for sure that I’ll come back for them. And you can give them your version of medical treatment.”
“Deal.”
Pete waited for the “but” but it never came. “I want you to lock the door,” he told her. “I’m leaving Andersen’s guards here to ‘secure the area.’”
“Good idea. After Kalbus—”
Pete shut the door in her face before she could finish. He didn’t have time to rehash what they’d already been through. Not if they were going to survive what was coming.
Once Marie was secure behind the control room door with Pete’s injured men, he took the rest of his men to Cellblock Two. Olowe and Ryan were conferring when they arrived. Some of the men were also missing.
“Tell me,” Pete said.
“Marie sold Baldwin on the whole ‘let’s get the prisoners to cooperate’ thing,” Olowe said. “Got it into his head to negotiate with the prisoners. I told him it was a bad idea, but a few others went with him. It seemed like it was going well, and the prisoners would return to their cells, but then… the tide turned.
“These guys are their own worst enemy,” Olowe said. “They did a lot of damage to one another before we even got here. Baldwin and the rest are holed up in a cell. They managed to hang onto their rifles, but their backs are against a wall. The only way out is to blast their way out. And they’re our crew. We all know they’re not prepared to open up a can of wholesale slaughter. Not if they don’t have to.”
“I’m afraid the only way men like this will cooperate is with the muzzle of a gun pointed at their face,” Pete said. “As soon as they see the rest of us, they’ll have a change of heart. It’s one thing to gain the upper hand on four, another when there’s more than twenty of us. Even animals have a sense of self-preservation.”
God damn Marie.
Pete didn’t have time to rue the damage she had done; he needed to get to his men.
He went to the door and unlocked it, ordering several of his men to stand by in case the prisoners tried to push their way out. When nothing happened, he opened the door all the way, only to be met by a large group of prisoners intent on escaping the cellblock. His men raised their rifles and fired a warning volley over the prisoners’ heads, which seemed to make them think twice.
“Back the fuck up!” Pete shouted. “Now!”
The prisoners obeyed, but yielded only a couple of feet of ground.
“We want to know what’s going on,” said a thickly bearded prisoner.
“We all do,” Pete muttered, then shouted, “But first you need to back up!”
He aimed his rifle directly at Blackbeard, which was how he decided to think of him. The last time he’d asked a prisoner’s name, it had turned out to be Wrath. Pete didn’t need any more of that nonsense. Didn’t need to know the names of the men he might have to shoot.
He raised his eyebrows, and at a gesture from Blackbeard, the group backed up a few more feet. Deciding to reward them, Pete told them what they thought had happened with the solar storm and the electromagnetic pulse.
“And we have no idea how long the situation will last,” he finished.
“Then why are you here?” Blackbeard said. “Someone managed to send in the National Guard, but no one knows what’s going on? Sounds like another line of bullshit to me.”
“We were transporting a prisoner to Mueller when everything went down. We’ve stepped in to help Warden Andersen keep the peace.” Pete wasn’t going to tell the prisoners the truth: that Andersen was tied up and sedated in the control room. True, they might be glad to hear the abusive warden was finally seeing some justice, but it wouldn’t help th
ings in the end. Pete had to make sure these prisoners believed that law and order still had the upper hand.
“What prisoner were you transporting?” Blackbeard asked.
“That’s on a need-to-know basis,” Ryan answered.
Once again, Pete considered how much he’d like to punch his friend in the face. Just shut your pie hole, already. Don’t start something if you don’t know how to finish it.
“And I don’t need to know,” Blackbeard said. “All right. I get it.” He crossed his arms. “What’s in it for us? If we cooperate?”
Ryan began to speak, no doubt ready with some other smart-ass comment that wouldn’t help the situation, but Pete spoke right over him. “For one thing, you don’t have to end up with a bullet in your body,” he said. “Medical’s gone, so don’t think a doctor’s going to come along and save your ass if you do get shot. And a blizzard has closed the only road in or out, for now. If you cooperate, you get a good chance of continuing to live.” He stared the man down. “So, what’ll it be?”
“I think I’ll take door number one,” Blackbeard said.
“Good choice,” Pete answered.
On Blackbeard’s command, the prisoners returned to their cells, and Pete, Ryan, Olowe, and Yu locked them in. When they’d finished, Baldwin called out to them from the cell they’d holed up in.
“See? I knew negotiation would work!”
Ryan smirked at him. “Are you kidding me? You’d still be holed up in that cell waiting for them to get the jump on you if Lieu hadn’t come along.”
Baldwin had the good grace to look momentarily contrite before he started babbling on to the three men with him about the success of their mission, and how he couldn’t wait to get back and tell Marie about it.
“Let’s get back to control,” Pete said, feeling as frustrated and defeated as he ever had. “We still have to deal with Cellblock Three.”
He expected there to be some resistance before they got out of there, and more than once raised his rifle when he thought he’d heard a sound, but they made it all the way back to control without running into any convicts, or guards. There, he half-expected the guards to have staged a coup and to find himself up against them and Andersen when they got back, but for once, his doomy expectations were wrong.
Inside control, Bahar had the radio open, guts exposed, and pieces lying here and there.
“How’s that coming along?” Pete asked.
“I think I’ve got it figured out. I just have to go scavenging for a part.”
“Keep me posted.”
Marie, who’d been busy writing on a notepad she’d found in one of the drawers, stopped what she was doing and pressed her fingers against Sadler’s carotid artery.
“He’s not doing well,” she said. “His pulse is thready. I don’t know how much longer he’ll last. At least he doesn’t seem to be suffering.”
“Great,” Pete said, rolling his eyes. “Look, I need you to stop harping on about cooperating with the prisoners. Baldwin and a few of his men bought your sales pitch and almost wound up dead.”
She looked shocked to hear it, but she didn’t back down. “Maybe they were speaking to the wrong men.”
Pete wanted to slap her. But he’d never hit a woman, and he wasn’t going to start now, so he settled for banging his fist on the table hard enough to startle her, and to make the loose pieces of radio jump.
“I swear to you, I will gag you and lock you in a janitor’s closet if you don’t cut that out,” he bellowed. “There might be a few decent men in here, though I highly doubt it, but not one of them is worth a scratch on any of my men. You’re being beyond naïve, and you’re going to get someone killed if you don’t stop.”
When Marie didn’t argue further, Pete called Lark in to check on Sadler. He concurred with Marie’s assessment that he was doing poorly. “I could really use more supplies.”
“There’s a bunch of stuff in medical,” Marie said.
“No one’s going to medical until we’ve taken care of Cellblock Three,” Pete said. He stared at her, willing her to get this through her thick head. He did not need her running off, because he didn’t have time to play Marie’s Personal Hero. “Say it after me. No one is going to medical.”
She looked mad enough to spit, but said the words.
And then Andersen started rustling around on the floor. Pete ordered two of his men to put Andersen with Smith for safety. Afterward, they joined him in the control room.
“What do you think we should do about Clyde’s cellblock?” Ryan asked.
Pete hated that his friend had referred to it as ‘Clyde’s cellblock,’ though it was probably the truth. The man was a born leader, and people flocked to him. If the guards had managed to get him into a cell before the power went out, he’d have the whole cellblock eating out of his hand—and no doubt ready to kill for him—by now.
“We should try to negotiate with him,” Marie said, stepping out of Pete’s reach.
“Right,” Pete said, furious. “Because that’s worked great so far. You’re just not getting it. I can’t decide if you’re purposefully blind, or deranged. Negotiation will never work with David Clyde. Even if he gave the appearance of cooperating, it would only be a stalling tactic to give him time to put other plans into play.”
Marie continued as if he hadn’t just insulted her, and this time she was firmer. Taller. Stronger. “Not every man in that cellblock is David Clyde.”
“I’m going to gag you,” he said coldly. “I’m not kidding.”
“You haven’t met the guy, Marie,” Ryan said, stepping in. “He gets into people’s heads in a way you can’t understand until you’ve seen him at work. I think we should consider that cellblock lost. Leave them to their own devices.”
“What, you mean leave them to starve and kill each other off?” Marie scoffed doubtfully.
“It’s tempting,” Pete said. “But I doubt Clyde’s going to be content to ride things out. It’s not in his nature. And since we’re occupying the same building as him—”
“What can he do, locked in a cellblock?” Ryan asked.
“I don’t know,” Pete said. “And that’s the problem, isn’t it? I’m not smart enough to imagine what a guy like that can do. At the very least, we need to check out the situation before we make any decisions. Besides, Dean was with him last and I’d bet a week’s pay he had a set of keys on him.”
That chilling thought kept everyone quiet for several long seconds, until Olowe said, “Lieu, I’m just looking at the blueprints again. That cellblock is the only one with two levels.”
“I’m going to go talk to Andersen,” Pete said. “See if he can give us any tips.”
“I doubt that piece of garbage will help,” Marie said.
“Then I guess I’ll have to persuade him,” Pete responded.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Ryan asked.
“Definitely not,” Pete said, and Ryan gave him a knowing look. “I want you to gather a few men and see what the food situation is. The kitchen is on the first floor, which is secure-ish. Ration-sized portions for now.”
Pete strode from the room, spine stiff, though whether it was because he could sense Marie’s disapproval coming at him in waves, or because he was steeling himself to do what needed to be done, he couldn’t say. It sickened him to imagine what getting information out of Andersen was going to look like, but the time for social niceties had passed.
The longer they went without communication from the outside world, the more lost he felt.
He hadn’t really had a chance to process the what-ifs because he’d been too busy dealing with the problems at hand. But if he looked at them, they frightened him—and frightened wasn’t something he felt willingly, or gracefully. The last thing he wanted was his friend by his side, bearing witness to that.
Or the immoral tactics he might have to use against the warden.
Andersen was leaning against the wall with his eyes closed when Pete arrived. Pet
e kicked his foot, the one that still had a shoe on it, and his eyes popped open.
“I don’t suppose you’re here to get me out of these cuffs,” Andersen said.
“You suppose right,” Pete said. “What can you tell me about Cellblock Three?”
“What’s my incentive for telling you anything?”
Back in the drawers in the control room, Pete had found a small multi-tool. He took it out now, opened it to reveal the largest of the blades, and showed it to Andersen. The blade was only about three inches long, but Pete wouldn’t need any more than that to cause the man plenty of pain.
“I don’t think you have it in you, Lieutenant.”
“Once, that might have been the case. But circumstances have shown me sides to myself that I didn’t know existed.” Pete pressed the point of the blade against the bottom of Andersen’s bare foot.
Andersen jerked his foot away as best he could, but Pete simply followed, maintaining the same painful pressure—just enough to avoid puncturing the skin. Andersen squirmed and jerked around, trying to get into a position where Pete didn’t have access to his foot, even though it was impossible. Finally, Pete became impatient and increased the pressure on the blade, puncturing the sole of Andersen’s foot.
Andersen yelled, but still didn’t speak. Pete pressed harder, and blood began to trickle from the wound.
Sweat began to trickle out of Pete’s hairline. He felt nauseous and soul-sick, but he persevered.
“Okay. Okay.” Andersen had also begun to sweat. “Cellblock Three isn’t fully occupied. We have the second floor sealed off. In theory, the prisoners wouldn’t have access to it, which means you could get in and reconnoiter without having to fight off the inmates.”
Finally, Pete thought. Something that might be a little easier.
Chapter 13
Pete left the control room and was sitting outside in the hallway, ostensibly to mingle with his men and see how they were doing, but more to get away from Marie.
Stone Cold Fear | Book 1 | Powerless Page 11