Beyond the Gates

by Jason D. Morrow

  3,327 — septic.

  I didn’t realize there was a mine here. In fact, I never thought to consider what my job here might be. I suppose I never thought I would really have a job, yet it makes sense. Why wouldn’t the reigning government get some use out of its prisoners? It’s mostly free labor but for the cost of feeding us and the cost of guards to watch over us.

  When Davis gets to me, 3,333, it feels like time freezes. I can’t imagine working in septic, though it may produce a way to get out of the prison. Or the mines for that matter.

  3,333 — sorting.

  When I step forward to receive my paper, I try to understand the words typed out in front of me.

  3,333

  Sorting

  Description: See cell block leader.

  Location: See cell block leader.

  I look up at Davis, but he is already calling out numbers for other prisoners.

  Sorting…sorting… I try to guess what that may mean in the context of a prison camp. A death camp. Perhaps it will be part of my job to carry the dead to the top of Vulture Hill. In a way, I hope it is, and in a way, I hope it isn’t. Any job that gets me outside the gates of the prison presents a better chance of escape.

  Still, I am bound to this place so long as my daughter is here. They could open the gates and tell me I’m free, but if Skylar isn’t walking out with me, I’m not going anywhere. Yet, even having the opportunity to step outside the prison camp will present me with a new perspective and help me plot an escape.

  That’s what I have to do, isn’t it? Warden Black essentially told us the only way out is our death. What he didn’t say was: or escape.

  I have no grand illusion that I will be able to do what many people before me were unable to do. I don’t necessarily think I can defy the odds and make it out of here with my daughter alive and well.

  But I’ve defied the odds before. No one to my knowledge ever figured out a cure for the greyskin virus—not for the forty years it has been leeching off the people of the world. So, if anyone is going to escape this hell, why wouldn’t it be Skylar and me? I just have to keep trying until I finally succeed. Escape is like a science experiment. There can be a thousand failures, but if I succeed once, that is all I need.

  But even science experiments aren’t entirely safe. This, I know all too well. It was experimenting that made me lose nearly everything. Because of my desire to create a cure, because of my ego, because of my arrogance, I lost my wife. I nearly lost Skylar. I almost died, too.

  Escape isn’t like other experiments. It has to be studied carefully, meticulously. Then, when it’s time to see the experiment through, you have to execute it flawlessly, or everything crumbles. I die. Skylar dies. That will be the end.

  The guards make sure we are all in line standing straight. None of us know what to do with the paper in our hands. Drop it on the ground? Fold it and put it in our pocket? Hand it back to Davis?

  Davis marches back and forth in front of the line of inmates spouting off rules about life in the cell block.

  Breakfast at six. Work. Lunch at one. Work. Rest. Dinner at six. Work. Lights out at ten. Don’t touch each other. Don’t wander from your assigned duties. No talking after lights out. Don’t ask too many questions. Work. Work. Work.

  The punishment of death is implied several times throughout Davis’ rant. Though his message was just as harsh, Warden Black didn’t seem as hard and vicious as this man.

  Davis has a fire in his eyes that unnerves me when he walks by. He seems the type who enjoys these speeches, and like the guard who warned me about my future cellmate, enjoys displaying his power over the prisoners. It is a common theme among the guards, and it’s an effective way to drive fear in the prisoners. A guard who wants to display his power might walk up to a man and shoot him in the back of the head. What inmate would cross that guard ever again? By the way they talk, I’m surprised they haven’t tried to make an example of one of us for merely breathing the wrong way.

  Just as I think it, Davis centers in on an unsuspecting victim. Davis is in the middle of the sentence, “And if you see another prisoner wal—,” when he stops and stares at a small man two heads down from me.

  “What is your number?” Davis asks.

  The man starts to look at the paper in his hands, but Davis slaps it to the floor. The cell block leader had been looking for his first victim to show the rest of us he’s boss. He chose a small man who had been picked up by soldiers and thrown onto my bus about an hour after I’d been caught. I never asked him his name. I never found out why he’d been caught. At the time I had simply been happy to know that Skylar hadn’t been captured—a joy that dissipated when she made her entrance onto the bus.

  The man had small limbs fitted onto a tiny body. If not for the chest hair poking out of the front of his shirt and the black line which showed a receding hairline before his head had been shaven completely, I would have suspected he was just a boy.

  “I asked what your number was,” Davis says.

  “Three, three…” he hesitates.

  “You don’t remember your number,” Davis says, his jawline pulsing.

  “I think…”

  “Why are you thinking?” Davis shouts. “What gives you the right to think? Did I say you could think?”

  “No,” the man says, his lips quivering.

  “You shouldn’t have to think. It’s a four-digit number. What exactly do you have to think about?”

  The man looks from side to side, but Davis grabs him by the back of the neck and pulls the small man toward him. His knuckles are white under the pressure of his grip, and the prisoner’s face turns red, then purple.

  “Don’t look at them,” he says through his teeth. “What is your number?”

  A single tear falls down the side of the man’s face, and the revulsion in Davis’ expression is unquestionable.

  Like a lightning flash, Davis strikes his knee upward into the man’s gut, doubling him over. He then raises his elbow and cracks it down into the man’s back, sending him to the floor face down.

  I try not to wince as Davis kicks the man in the ribs repeatedly. The thud of steel toe boots slapping against skin and cracking bones is enough to make me want to vomit. The prisoner lets out a wail with each kick, and with each wail, Davis kicks harder until the man makes no more noise.

  Is he dead? There’s blood bubbling from his mouth and perhaps the slightest hint of movement in his back from the shallow pumping of his lungs.

  The man hadn’t done anything, but Davis needed someone to be the example. I don’t doubt there is one unfortunate sap in every new group of prisoners that walks through the gates of Vulture Hill Prison Camp. I half-expect Davis to pull out his pistol and let off a round in the back of the man’s head. Instead, he nods at one of the guards, and a pair of them pick the prisoner up off the ground and carry him out of the room.

  Davis paces back and forth, a flame within him growing as though the prisoner had committed such an offense that Davis was ready to beat down the rest of us by association. Feeling the paper between my fingers, I can’t imagine doing what it says: See cell block leader. I have no intention of asking Davis any questions unless I absolutely must.

  It’s not the pain I’m afraid of. The prisoner he just beat up might not even die, but I can’t imagine Davis would mind if he did. I don’t need to be the next target for any reason. Perhaps there is another prisoner here with the same job description. If not here then there are others. Better to get my information from someone else if I can.

  Davis goes through the rest of the rules. I don’t hear most of them. It all boils down to: don’t try to escape. Don’t do anything that will make you a target. If you make yourself a target, then you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing.

  I decide there is only one way to survive for very long in a place like Vulture Hill. You have to conform. At least, you have to look like you have conformed. You don’t want the guards to know your name. You don’t wan
t them to know your number. You don’t want them to see you slouching, standing too straight, fidgeting, looking around, talking when you shouldn’t be, making any noise, doing anything that could be construed as suspicious. All it will take is suspicion, and you’ll become a bloody mess on the floor.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Skylar

  I WISH I knew what kind of people inhabited Vulture Hill. Are they murderers? Thieves? Are they people just like Papa and me—people looking for a way out of the Containment Zone? I’m sure there is a mix, so that means I have to be on my guard. No matter who they are, though, we all share things in common. We are hungry. We are scared. We are here to die.

  Even Warden Black said it was only a matter of how we lived until we died here. Regardless of whether I am good and do everything I’m supposed to do, or if I cause all sorts of trouble and try to break for the exits, I am meant to die here.

  I still haven’t gotten used the smell of decay in the air—the rotting flesh of the greyskins, wherever they are. There must be a bunch of them.

  My cell is cold and small. There is a bunk bed, and I don’t know which one is my cellmate’s. The brown wool blankets and the flat white pillows on both bunks are tidy and without wrinkles. My legs are tired as is the rest of my body. I feel sore all over so I sit on the side of the mattress on the bottom bunk.

  Warden Black told me my cellmate goes by Nine, which is her prisoner number. He said she was an older woman. If she’s old, then I am more than likely sitting on her bed, but I can’t imagine climbing the ladder to the top bunk at the moment.

  I’m hungry. I’m tired. Beaten. My head feels cold without my hair. I haven’t seen a reflection of myself, but I bet I look weird. I’ve never had short hair, much less a shaved head. My back and neck still hurt from the stream of the powerful hose when they sprayed me.

  I should have stayed hidden. I should have never tried to get food. As famished as I may have felt at the time, I probably could have made it another day. Two days. Three might have been pushing it. But I let my hunger get the best of me, and now I’m sitting in a death camp, not knowing whose bed I’m sitting on.

  Nine.

  I wonder what kind of person she is. Warden Black seemed to want me to be taken care of, but that doesn’t make any sense. It’s also directly opposite of how he acted in his speech when we all arrived at Vulture Hill. During his speech, he seemed cold. Hard. Like nothing has ever mattered to him. But when I was in his office, he was gentler. Kinder. Like a real human being, if not a little strange.

  Maybe he has or had a daughter my age. Maybe he has a soft spot for children. If he does, it wasn’t enough for him to let me go or to try and extinguish my fear of dying. Quite the opposite. He readily told me that I am going to die here.

  I don’t want to believe him. I can’t believe him. To believe him is to give up. I can’t give up. Not now. Not on my first day. Things are going to get a lot harder. I have to be ready for that.

  Outside my cell and down the long corridor, a set of double doors burst open, then another at the other end, followed by the sound of hundreds of slow, tired feet.

  “Let’s move it, let’s move it,” shouted a guard.

  This must be the end of the workday or at least a break. Prisoners shuffle past, their heads low, their limbs frail and skinny. Their heads are all shaved, though not pale like mine. My scalp hasn’t been exposed to the sun before, but theirs has darkened to the same pigmentation as their faces.

  I know it should be the least of my worries, but I find myself disappointed that my shaven head isn’t a one-time event. Judging by the various lengths of some of the women passing by, our hair is allowed to reach a maximum of a quarter of an inch long before it is shaved to the skin again.

  None of the women look up to see me, and if they did, I’m not sure they would care. So many of them have probably lost their children or have had to leave them behind. It’s probably best that I’m not noticed so as not to add more grief to their lives.

  When my cell door opens, I stand from the bed and step in front of the toilet. In the doorway stands a woman who looks like she feels—more tired and beaten than I do. And she probably is.

  She doesn’t offer a smile. She doesn’t express a bit of concern or an iota of happiness. She shows no emotion at all. Instead, she walks into the cell, turns toward the bottom bunks and lies down with her back to me.

  I suppose I shouldn’t feel surprised by her coldness. She has no reason to feel anything toward me. She’s in a death camp. Why would she? Still, I feel like to make the best of a place like this, or at least to survive for as long as possible, it’s going to be essential to make friends regardless of age or background.

  Mama and Papa had always taught me the importance of being positive no matter the situation. I was no Pollyanna, mind you. I didn’t go around playing the glad game all the time. I’m not sure even Pollyanna would have played the glad game in a greyskin-infested world where she was sentenced to live out the rest of her days in a death camp for simply trying to escape a Containment Zone.

  Still, would it have been so hard for this “Nine” person to have said hello to me?

  I glance through the bars to see that most of the inmates have made it to their cells. The corridor is broad enough to show about five different cells on the opposite side in my field of vision. Each of them contains two women, each woman lying on a top or a bottom bunk, the older of each pair typically taking the lower bunk.

  Voices come from cells down the corridor, but for the most part, this seems to be a time for inmates to get some rest from their workday, I’m guessing before being led to dinner.

  I’m hoping before being led to dinner.

  A few minutes pass before I decide to make my way to the top bunk, ignoring my protesting legs and back. I wish the woman had said hello to me, but I can’t let a little thing like that be a bother. If that kind of thing bothers me, I won’t make it very long here. I’ll end up a pile of bones at the top of Vulture Hill.

  I didn’t realize sleep was ready to take over so quickly. The bed creaks and small springs dig into my sides when I lay down. I’ve never felt so comfortable in all my life.

  My last thought before falling asleep is: I’m going to be a pile of bones at the top of Vulture Hill anyway.

  “Hey, wake up. It’s time to go. Hurry.”

  Fingertips jabbing into my shoulder jerk me awake, and at first I have no idea where I am. When I look down at the woman below me standing next to the bed and looking back and forth between me and the corridor frantically, I remember.

  “They aren’t going to like it if they find you’re still in bed,” Nine says. “Hurry up, get down. Stand next to me.”

  The urgency in her voice is enough to make me spring into action, though my mind seems to know what I’m doing before my body does. I fumble to the end of the bed and nearly lose my footing trying to climb down.

  I do as Nine tells me and stand at attention next to her, reaching up to pull my hair behind my ears before remembering I no longer have any hair.

  “How long have I been asleep?” I whisper, but Nine doesn’t answer. Guards march by the cells, glancing into each one. There is some yelling at the other end of the corridor, but I can’t tell what is going on. Maybe they caught someone still asleep.

  The yelling is met by terrified screams of a woman in the distance followed by a banging noise. Part of me wants to know what’s happening while another part of me wants to close my eyes and crawl under the bed. I look at Nine and feel an overwhelming sense of thankfulness for her caring enough to wake me. She may not have said hello when she first saw me, but she may have just saved me from a beating.

  One of the guards yells out an order, and all the jail cells spring open. Nine leans down and whispers, “Stay close to me.”

  I can’t really describe the relief I feel with Nine’s words. I know it doesn’t mean much, and I know that if a guard wants to hurt me, there isn’t much Nine can do to help,
but as I walk behind her into the corridor and fall in line with the rest of the inmates, I feel safer because I’m not alone.

  Sometime between my meeting with Warden Black and now I have wondered if he was playing a cruel joke on me, telling me he wanted to give me a good cellmate, but really wanting to pair me with someone who had been sentenced to Vulture Hill for torturing children. I’m starting to see that isn’t the case.

  We walk in lines. Lines, lines, lines. Prison seems to be about nothing but endless lines. Slow-moving lines. Each step feels like a half step until we are outside and the evening sun hits us from the horizon. Inside, I could smell the decay of greyskins, but out here the smell is overwhelming.

  The lines, the smell, the strange quiet in the air as if there is no one here at all. It’s almost like we’re bald ghosts haunting an abandoned prison, doomed to wander inside the fences for the rest of eternity.

  I try to keep my eyes in front of me, staring into Nine’s back, but it’s difficult for me to ignore my surroundings. Almost involuntarily I look to my left and right to find row upon row of women who seem to be on the brink of death. They are skin and bones. Their eyes are sunken, their clothes baggy. This place has taken the life from them. Even the ground on which we walk is no more than sandy dirt that forms a cloud of dust as we move our feet. The dominant color in every direction is brown. That is until my eyes fall on the top of Vulture Hill, which is patched with green grass and garnished with trees.

  The end. Our end.

  Not my end…

  In a place as barren and bleak as this prison camp, one might dream of green pastures and beautiful trees and think of freedom, but the greenery only taunts us, mocks us.

  Sure, you can feel the grass beneath your toes… you can caress the bark of trees… you can touch the silky leaves with your fingertips… as the vultures feast on your organs…

  I want to cry.

  The lines slow to a crawl and people start entering a large building ahead. It is at this moment when some of the prisoners seem to relax and feel freer to look around. Some of them even talk to each other.