Cole laughed even louder than before. “Hell no! Did you forget that you were going to let me die? Because I sure as hell didn’t. So no, when I get in front of the judge, I’m going to blame everything on you. You and Hamilton, and…” He was about to say Ashley Tinsley, but he was suddenly uncertain what role she played in any of this. “And Monica. I’m going to suck all of you down with me.”
“You son of a bitch,” McGuigan hissed, and then tried to smash Cole with his shoulder. Cole’s hands were still cuffed in front of him and as McGuigan’s were behind his back, Cole easily avoided the shoulder. McGuigan couldn’t avoid the knee Cole sent into his midsection. He went down in a gasping heap. The blow was both fulfilling and violent enough that Cole’s gunshot wound along the side of his thigh opened up and began to bleed again.
A guard came storming up and Cole bowed before him. “Sorry officer. He just kept referring to corrections guards as little pussies and…what else did you say? That they weren’t even real cops? Yeah that was it.”
“Is that right?”
“I wouldn’t lie, until I get in front of the judge, that is.” Cole offered the officer a friendly wink. The policeman laughed and clubbed McGuigan a couple of times and strode off. Cole squatted down next to his former boss. “That was fun. Wait till they find out you were a lieutenant. These fucks hate everyone higher up the food chain than them.”
McGuigan grunted, “Please don’t.”
A part of Cole wanted to crush his spirit so that he would go to the gallows a broken man. A part of him didn’t care enough to put in the effort. He ended up doing nothing and he was separated from McGuigan not long after as another judge arrived and opened up a second line.
There were over a hundred people crammed into what was called the pre-sentencing area—guilt was such a foregone conclusion that calling it the pre-trial area didn’t make much sense. Cole remained in the original line that swung back and forth S-like. As he limped slowly along, he went over the testimony he would give. He wasn’t going to hold back. He was going to spill everything he knew about zombies, vamps, corrupt cops and mob bosses.
His judge was at the end of his shift and he buzzed through the petty crimes with only lip service given to the concept of law. Cole’s trial was going to be different. Across the room he could see three Krupp lawyers surrounding one of the prosecutors, brow beating her so badly that the woman seemed to be shrinking into her grey pantsuit with each word.
They were aiming for a specific outcome and they were going to get it, there was no question about that. Cole knew what they wanted. They wanted him dead and any question of Krupp’s guilt expunged from the record.
“Sorry, you dumb shits, you’re going down too.” Everything led back to Krupp. They were the reason Cole was there and he was going to tear them a new ass. He pictured the questioning to go like this:
“State your name.”
“I used the name Aaron Reynolds when I first discovered zombies at Krupp Metalworks last year.”
“That wasn’t the question! Strike that from the record!”
“Are you asking what name I used when I discovered zombies at Krupp Metalworks yesterday?”
“I just want you to state your name!”
“Of course. The name I use when the governor tasks me to hunt zombies at places like Krupp is Cole Younger.”
It would go on from there until all the prisoners, guards, judges, secretaries and lawyers couldn’t say the word Krupp without associating it with zombies. People would talk and the rumors would begin to swirl around. Cole figured that if he could at least bring down Krupp, then maybe dying would be worth it.
That was the plan he had in mind but just as he was pushed forward in front of the judge, a snarling grin on his tatted face, he saw Corrina out of the corner of his eye. Somehow they had caught her—and now they were going to kill her. Panic flooded him as the pinch-faced prosecutor recited, for maybe the hundredth time that night, “State your name.” Behind her were the Krupp lawyers, a Krupp guard with a bruised and bloody face, and three pretty blonde women in Krupp overalls—they clearly did not work for Krupp; they were paid witnesses who would say anything a prosecutor would want them to say for a dollar.
None of them mattered to him. Neither did the truth matter or even his revenge. Saving Corrina mattered. Cole took a long shaky breath before he announced loudly so that the entire room could hear him, “I am Cole Younger. And I’m guilty of planting a fake zombie head at Krupp metalworks. I tricked some people into helping me. They thought they were doing the right thing. They are victims of my crimes just like Krupp is.”
The prosecutor grinned at the ease of the conviction, the lawyers eyed Cole warily, wondering what he was up to, and one of the pretty blonde women whispered: “We still gettin’ paid, right?”
The judge felt that something wasn’t right. It was a rare day when a defendant just blurted out his guilt like that. Normally, they mumbled their confession. Cole sounded like he was on stage and trying to project to the last row in the house.
“Why?” the judge demanded, squinting at Cole through smudged spectacles. He liked them dirty. The grey filter made everyone seem half alive and it was easier to condemn a man that way.
“I was trying to blackmail Krupp,” Cole answered, again in that thundering voice. “I tricked a girl named Corrina Marie into thinking there were real zombies and had her plant the head for me. She thought she was doing the right thing. That’s her.” Cole pointed at Corrina, who looked tiny and lost in the brown overalls she had taken from Krupp. “She can testify against me.”
The prosecutor was all for the idea, the professional witnesses sneered, worried that they would lose their dollars, and the Krupp lawyers shook their heads in unison.
The judge took this all in and waited until one of the Krupp lawyers cleared his throat, winked, and then shook his head. The witnesses weren’t the only ones who were going to get paid off. “That’s not necessary,” the judge intoned. “I think we have all the evidence we’ll need.”
“But…”
“But nothing!” the judge thundered. “You confessed, which means you’re guilty. End of story. For the crimes of extortion and public endangerment, I sentence you to…” He cast a glance at the Krupp lawyers, one of whom drew a line across his throat with the back of his thumb. “I sentence you to death. Next!”
Cole was bustled from the room, his cuffs rattling and his head spinning. Before he knew it, he had been stripped and redressed into a sour-smelling prison jumpsuit. Chains replaced his handcuffs and then he was herded once more into the waiting room for the condemned where he found himself stashed in a cage near the door that led to the gallows. He was so far down the row that even when he craned his neck and pressed his bruised cheek into the bars, he caught only quick glimpses of the other prisoners as they were led to or from their cages.
He heard McGuigan whining about the unfairness of the trial when he was brought in, and he couldn’t miss Hamilton roaring curses and vowing revenge. Corrina came in like a whisper. She was brought closer than the others and he saw her face for a full three seconds before she was pushed into her cage. She had been white and shaking.
“I’m sorry,” Cole said in a strangled voice.
“Fuck you, Cole!” Hamilton bellowed.
“Yeah, fuck you, Cole!” Sergeant Phillips added. “This is all your fault.”
McGuigan added to the growing chorus of “Fuck-yous.” For some reason, the other condemned prisoners had taken up the call. Cole slumped down in a depressed stupor as number thirty-seven was called. His number was sixty-eight, which meant he could expect to spend the next fifteen hours being told to fuck off before he had his neck stretched.
But that was not meant to be. The Krupp lawyers were not about to give him that much time and before he knew it, the jailor was banging on his cell door. “I said number sixty-eight! Come on. Git on outta there for I git my jump-up an’ give you a zap.”
Cole came out o
f the tiny cage in a crouch, his leg throbbing but at least his back wasn’t crimped in a doubled-over position as it had the last time he’d been in the cages. “What’s going on? Weren’t you just on thirty-seven?”
“Well, now I’m on sixty-eight. Ain’t no law says I gotta go in order.” There was a ghost of a smile on his lips that told Cole he’d gotten his share of Krupp money as well. Not that it mattered. Not once in the history of the city had anyone gotten a second stay of execution. In fact, the governor probably wanted Cole dead as badly as Monica Turner.
He tried to tell himself that it was better to get it over with, that he’d be miserable in his cage, cold and afraid. “Yeah, this is much better,” he muttered under his breath, and yet his legs were suddenly weak and threatened to buckle beneath him, and the air in his lungs wouldn’t go all the way down, but seemed to stop in his throat. His feet were numb, and he could only shuffle, while at the same time it felt like he had tiny arcs of lightning in his hands and fingers that made them shake.
As he shuffled, fear had him leaning back into the jailor. He should’ve been embarrassed but all he could think about was the rope around his neck—stretching it—the image kicked the swirl of butterflies in his stomach into high gear.
“Ya gotta barf?” the jailor asked. “Aim it right there.” He pointed to a plastic bucket that was three-quarters filled with congealing vomit.
“Fuuuuck,” Cole moaned and turned away.
“Just don’t go barfin’ on me or the floor. You barf on me and I’ll make sure the rope is loose on your neck. Trust me, you don’t want that. You die slowly that way and you feel everything.”
Cole wanted to tell him to fuck off. That would’ve been his usual reply, only just then his brain was like mush and slow to come up with even a simple rejoinder like fuck off. He stared and tried to think of something to say. Then the guard was pulling him along again through a heavy door and into a large open room. The gallows, a long wooden structure some twenty feet in height and double that in length, could “process” ten executions at a time.
Currently there was only one person hanging there, a blindfolded woman with a dark stain running from the crotch of her prison greys. She was just finishing up the twitchy dance most hanging victims went through as their dying body convulsed.
“I talked to Doris,” the jailor said to the hangman. “She gonna try to keep the baby. What the fuck, right?”
“Maybe it ain’t yours,” the hangman said and then belched. The stench made the jailor squint and wave a hand in front of his face. The hangman laughed before giving the rope a hard shake, making the dead woman swing from side to side. She remained motionless otherwise. “I think she’s about done. What about you? You ready? You got any last words or anything?” He was talking to Cole. Cole blinked at him.
“Last words?” It’s all my fault. This floated through his head. They weren’t poetic in any way but they were the truth. No matter what excuses he made, when everything was boiled away, the truth couldn’t be ignored: his death and the death of the others were his fault. All of it. If he had been more like Hamilton, he would never have been in this room, and Corrina wouldn’t be in a cage waiting to die. She’d still be a little whore and happily drifting through a horror of a life riding the Rican Mule.
His tongue, feeling thick and dry, clung to the roof of his mouth as he choked out, “Naw.”
“Good,” the jailor said with another glance up at the woman. “I think she’s good an’ I got five more of these before I can take off so…”
“Hey, I ain’t rushin’ nothing for nobody,” the hangman barked. “You weren’t there when the dude woke up in the mulcher. I tell you, that was a turning point for me. No more short-cuts. She hangs for her allotted time; no more, no less.”
The woman was cut down five minutes later. Cole, who had seen a thousand dead bodies, turned away. She was like warm rubber, especially her disgustingly long neck. Her head flopped on it like her neck bones had been turned to milk. She was trundled away by the jailor.
“Hey, no shittin’ yourself,” the hangman said, shoving Cole forward. “I ain’t cleaning your crap up. Come. Let’s get up here. Let’s make it official.”
Just then the jailor came back. “The mulcher’s backed up, but she ain’t goin’ anywhere. Here.” He tossed up the hood that he had taken off the woman. The hangman caught it and stuck it between his knees before roping Cole’s neck.
It was tight, the rough braided rope digging into his flesh. “Christ!” Cole cried in a strangled voice as the hood went on his head. It had a chemical smell that burned his nostrils and made his head go light. The fabric of the hood was old and worn, and didn’t completely block his vision. He could see the hangman grab a lever, glance once at his watch, and then to the silent phone hanging on the wall. It didn’t ring. It never rang.
“It’s time,” the hangman said.
“Wait,” Cole said in a voice that was so feeble the word didn’t escape the hood. It was just as well that it didn’t. Cole was suddenly too weak to stand. His knees were shaking and he was a second from fainting, which would only begin the process of dying that much earlier. It’s the rope, he thought just before the hangman pulled the lever. It’s too tight.
The lever was pulled and the floor dropped out beneath Cole and he fell. The phone never rang.
Chapter 23
Cole Younger died on the third subfloor beneath the City Courts Building. The hangman pronounced him dead just after the sun rose behind a thick bank of wet clouds. His body, limp and loose, was then trundled out to the mulching line as were the bodies of Corrina Marie, Bruce Hamilton, Shamus McGuigan, Sergeant Phillips and Frank Brunker.
With their deaths, the official investigation into a possible zombie infestation at the Krupp metalworks facility was closed and the matter relegated to a footnote that was later changed to read: Murderer and accomplices convicted of Krupp Factory crime spree charged and convicted.
There was a small two-person team within the city’s executive apparatus who specialized at modifying history. Their job was to expunge records, delete accounts, and hide or manipulate official photos so that a person ceased to exist.
Corrina Marie’s deletion as a human involved requesting the only three records on file: her birth certificate—which showed that she had only just turned twelve three days before, her work license—which was long expired, and her criminal record—which was one paragraph long. She disappeared in a blink of an eye.
McGuigan, Hamilton, Phillips and Brunker took longer. It would be days before they were completely nullified.
Cole Younger was the easiest to erase. His city utility accounts had already been deleted, he had no birth certificate to begin with, and his time as a police officer had been obliterated four years before. All he had to prove he was a real person was his bounty hunter’s license. The physical copy he carried was burned along with the rags he’d been wearing. The actual paperwork was shredded and burned even before he got to the mulcher. A search of his files in the Hall of Records turned up a few tax forms, and that was it.
He had become an unperson.
This unperson didn’t know he’d been unmade when he woke with a tremendous headache chained inside a cramped metal box. A diluted amber light filtered into the box via four small grates set at the top of the walls.
“Fuuuuck,” he said in a long dry whisper. His throat was like sandpaper and when he touched it, he remembered the noose. “What the hell?” he muttered, running his hands around his neck and only then discovering that he was manacled. People didn’t chain a dead man. An undead man sure but not a human, and he still felt mostly human. “Maybe I’m in hell.”
“Cole, is that you?”
He didn’t recognize the gravelly voice. “I think so. Who are you?”
“Fuck you, Cole.”
Without any glimmer of emotion one way or another, he realized it was Hamilton. “Yeah,” was Cole’s response. He tried to sit up and found that his ankle
s were shackled as well. Imitating an inchworm on a hot plate was the only way he could sit up. Groaning from his aching head and the gash in his thigh, he looked around and realized that “cell” was a generous term. They were in a stinking metal box that was barely four feet high, eight wide and maybe a dozen feet long.
There were other bodies around him, slumped and unmoving. Corrina was one of these. He recognized her by her size and her now strange looking haircut. With more groans, he scooted over to her and found her unresponsive but warm. “Thank God,” he said.
“Oh yeah, let’s all thank the fuckin’ sky fairy for saving us,” Hamilton spat. “Oh, except we aren’t saved, are we? We are in a fuckin’ paddy wagon! Chained in a fuckin’ paddy-wagon! This isn’t what being saved looks like, dip shit.”
“It’s better than being dead,” Cole replied.
Hamilton snorted. “We’ll see, won’t we.” The two lapsed into silence which slowly turned into a grinding unfulfilling sleep.
Shamus McGuigan woke next and went through the same gradual realization that Hamilton had. “We’re fucked,” he groused. Then Van Phillips woke, Brunker and Corrina came around in that order and they all agreed that dying the one time should’ve been enough. No one wanted to go through it again.
Corrina laid her head on Cole’s lap. Her eyes were red and puffy, and she kept swallowing loudly as if her throat had actually been crushed. “The Krupp people had to have cameras outside the building or maybe spies, because they came right for me. I ran and hid but some little shit ratted me out. If I ever see him again…” Her hands went to where her coat pocket would’ve been if she was still wearing a coat. She sighed and groaned, “What’s gonna happen to us?”
Cole didn’t know. Someone wanted them alive, but he couldn’t imagine who. They had embarrassed the governor, they had ruined the chances for Julius Fantucci, and he wasn’t the type to throw good money after bad; he would’ve let them swing. And it wasn’t Ashley Tinsley. She might’ve had the hots for Cole at one point, but was it enough to risk her precarious position by saving him? Maybe, possibly, and perhaps that generosity would extend to Corrina since the girl had saved Ashley’s life at one time, but there was no way in hell that Ashley would’ve lifted a finger to help four city employees. They would be less than servants in her eyes.
Dead Eye Hunt (Book 2): Into The Rad Lands Page 22