by BB Easton
“So … not good?” Lamar summarizes.
I screw my eyes shut and shove my hands into my hair, tugging as hard as I can to distract myself from the pain. A squeal emanates from somewhere deep inside of me, high and pained and pressured, like a teakettle about to blow.
“What the hell happened?” Michelle asks, climbing in behind me and shutting the doors. “You were in there for, like, half an hour!”
“I had him!” I shout, hot, angry tears leaking through my closed eyelids. “I had him, and I fucking lost him!” I take a few deep breaths and try to calm down. Try to force my brain to think.
Think, Rain. Keep it together.
“He’s right there!” I growl, shoving my hand in the direction of the police station. “He’s right here, and I can’t get him out!”
“What happened in there?” Michelle repeats her question as she climbs back into the passenger seat.
I suck in another deep breath and cover my mouth with my hands. “They have guns. That’s what happened.”
“We have guns,” Quint offers.
“We have two guns.” I snort.
Flip lifts his pant leg, revealing a small silver pistol in an ankle holster.
“Okay, three guns. Even if we managed to take out the cops in the lobby without getting shot, there are probably more officers inside. All they’d have to do is seal the doors, and then we’d be sitting ducks.”
Michelle shakes her head. “This whole Green Mile operation is run by, what … the governor, a handful of police officers at the station, maybe a dozen riot cops, and a couple of security guards at the capitol? What is that, like, twenty people?”
“If we could just get the Bonys on our side, we’d have enough people to fight back or even the runaways from the mall.” Lamar raises his voice in excitement. “Q is fuckin’ crazy. I bet she’d kill a cop.”
I sigh. “I tried to get her to come, but you know her. Q only does what’s good for Q.”
“You know who would probably love to help? All those prisoners they just released,” Quint suggests. “Nobody hates cops more than criminals, right?”
“There’s enough guns in this country to arm every man, woman, and child,” Flip mumbles around a mouthful of loaded potato soup. “All you need is, like, a hundred of ’em.”
My shoulders slump. “How do we even find that many people? Look around. Everybody’s just tryin’a survive. They’re not gonna put their necks on the line for people they don’t know.”
“Damn.” Michelle’s mouth draws into a frown as she reaches for a bottle of vodka next to a monitor. “I wish we could broadcast a message for you, but they’d kill us as soon as they saw it.”
I stare into the black monitor next to her as she takes a long pull from the bottle, seeing only my reflection staring back at me.
Broadcast.
Message.
As soon as they saw it.
“What if they don’t see it?” I blurt out, my eyes darting back to Michelle’s. “What if we fight fire with fire?”
“What are you talkin’ about?” Flip asks as Michelle chokes on her last swallow of vodka.
“I’m talking about subliminal messaging! That’s how they programmed us to think the world was gonna end, right? How they drove a quarter of us insane enough to kill ourselves or get ourselves killed. What if we do the exact same thing against them? We could plant a subliminal message in the interview footage that makes people want to fight back!”
Michelle shakes her head. “Stella …”
“My name is Rain.”
“Rain … we only have a few hours to get back to the newsroom and upload that interview. Where are we gonna find that kind of content? Or software even?” Michelle turns to Flip. “Can our programs even splice images in at intervals that small?”
Flip shrugs as Quint gestures to the computer screens. “Can’t you just find the images online?”
Michelle’s mouth falls open. “Have you guys not been online since April 23?”
We shake our heads in unison.
Michelle huffs in exasperation. “It’s unusable! With no laws, it’s been completely overrun by hackers. If you go online through anything other than a secure government server, you’ll have your identity stolen, your bank account emptied, and you’ll be locked out of your device in seconds.”
I groan and fall back in my chair, rubbing my eyes with both hands. “So, where do we find a secure server?”
“Well, they have one at the TV station, but I am not working on this there.” Michelle takes another gulp from her bottle before passing it to Flip.
He accepts it with a polite nod and turns to face me. “Pretty much any government buildin’ should have a secure server. You just gotta be able to get inside and plug in.”
My eyes drift over to the heavily tinted windows on the side of the van. Just beyond them, rising like both a beacon of hope and symbol of death, is the glowing gold dome of the capitol building.
“Michelle”—I swallow—“you still got that media pass?”
Wes
Once, when I was, like, eight, I went on a school field trip to the zoo. My mom was too fucked up on whatever her drug of choice was at the time to sign the permission slip, but my teacher must have forged that shit because, when the day came, they let me get on the bus right along with everybody else.
I’d never been to the zoo before. Hell, I’d never been on a field trip before. I was so fucking excited, but once we got there, all I felt was sad. These big, magical beasts—creatures I’d only ever seen on TV—were locked up in cages like criminals. They hardly moved. They ignored us completely. Even the lions, the kings of the fucking jungle, were just lying on rocks, waiting to die. Every motherfucker there had accepted their fate.
Except the fucking tiger.
The tiger was the only animal there who was in solitary confinement. And he was the only animal there who was pacing. Not lazy, I’m just gonna stretch my legs pacing, but fucking-head-down, eyes-on-the-prize, I’m gonna find a way out of this motherfucker pacing. He would do a lap around the perimeter of his cage, pushing on the Plexiglas walls with his body. Then, he would do figure eights around all the trees, which had been cut short to keep him from climbing out.
There was something different about him. Something that made him refuse to accept his circumstances, like the others. And now, I know what it was.
Somewhere out there, that motherfucker had a mate.
I could live in here quite fucking comfortably if Rain were locked up too. We could fuck and talk and feed each other and make fun of Elliott all goddamn day. But without her, I feel like that fucking tiger. I want to climb the walls. I want to scrape the mortar out from in between the cinder blocks with my bare hands. I want to rip the face off the next piece of shit who rattles my bars.
But unlike that tiger, I am gonna get the fuck out of here.
Because unlike that tiger, I’m not gonna let them know I’m restless.
If he had acted as lazy as the lions, those zookeepers might have gotten lazy too. Maybe let his trees grow a little too long. Maybe used a little less caution when they opened the door to feed him. An opportunity would have presented itself.
Which is exactly why I’m lying on my cot, staring at the ceiling, trying to act bored, when all I want to do is punch holes in the walls and wear a figure eight into the floor with my pacing.
Clomp. Clomp. Clomp.
Hard-sole shoes approach, but they’re not the spirited footsteps of Officer Elliott. Nor are they the slow shuffles of Officer Hoyt. No, these punishing footsteps belong to someone angrier. Someone who must be picturing the faces of his mortal enemies on every unpolished floor tile. Someone with a gray buzz cut and a burgeoning beer gut.
Officer MacArthur appears outside my door with a scowl on his leathery face and the scent of cheap whiskey emanating from his pores.
“Parker,” he snaps, addressing me like I’m one of his soldiers.
But I don’t fucking salut
e.
“That’s me,” I deadpan, tucking my hands behind my head.
“I’m here to take you to the showers. The governor insists on the accused looking decent for the Green Mile.”
“Did you pull the short straw or somethin’?” I ask. “Why isn’t Elliott or Hoyt takin’ me?”
“That’s Officer Elliott and Officer Hoyt to you, son,” he growls. “And I’ll be taking you because the accused tend to get a little aggressive at this point in their sentence.”
“Ah,” I say, sitting up with a stretch. “So you’re the muscle, huh?”
“Step over to the door and place your hands through the bars.”
I do as he said, my movements as slow and despondent as a caged lion’s.
He clamps a pair of handcuffs around my wrists as tight as they’ll go before saying, “Now, stick your feet out, one at a time.”
I do that, too, watching for signs of intimidation or fear. He’s not shaking, not nervous. But he’s shackling me just as tightly as he cuffed me, which tells me I haven’t fully convinced him of my apathy.
I wait for him to unlock my door and marvel at how clear-eyed he seems for somebody who smells like the bottom of a bottle of Jim Beam.
“You former military?” I ask as he guides me by the bicep into the hall.
He grumbles in response but eventually spits out, “Army. Special Forces.”
“No shit? That’s pretty badass, man. Were you, like, a paratrooper or something?”
“Sniper,” he mutters under his breath.
Sniper. My fists flex, and blood surges to my extremities. There’s only one thing they need a sniper for around here.
We walk past an open office door, and the image of my own face stops me in my tracks. There’s a monitor above the desk broadcasting the interview Rain did earlier. I watch myself lean against the bars, orange polyester from the neck down, poorly masked shock and awe from the neck up. The back of Rain’s head and a sliver of the side of her face are visible on the screen. I want to reach out and run my fingers through her slicked-back black hair as she stutters and stumbles over her first question to me.
“Mr. Parker—”
“Please, call me Wes.”
“Wes … how are you? I mean, in here. How are you holding up in here?”
My throat tightens at the sound of her shaky voice. On camera, she looks fucking amazing, but from where I was standing, she was all teary eyes and trembling hands.
And red fucking lips.
“How am I? I’m … I’m better than I was a few minutes ago.”
Mac coughs out a laugh and claps me on the shoulder. “Pretty smooth, boy. That replacement they got for Michelle Ling was a stone-cold fox, wasn’t she?” He tugs me by the arm down the hall, coughing and chuckling and coughing some more.
I grind my teeth and try to concentrate on keeping my breathing even. I want to put my fist through the guy’s face, but I can’t let him see me sweat.
I try to figure out an angle as we turn down the next hallway and stop in front of the cabinet where they keep the soap and towels. I can’t play on his guilty conscience like Hoyt because this dude is literally a trained killer. I can’t play to his vanity like Elliott because … fucking look at him. But maybe, since he’s a military guy, I can appeal to his sense of justice. Make him see that what they’re doing here is wrong.
That what he’s doing is wrong.
“Michelle Ling looked pretty roughed up, huh? I wonder what happened to her.”
“Probably got jumped by a meth-head or a Bony.” Mac shrugs, pulling a towel out of the cabinet and draping it over his arm.
“That has to be hard for a guy like you … seeing all that crime happening right outside your door and not being able to do anything about it.”
Mac grabs a nondescript white bottle, which I assume has some kind of shampoo in it, and closes the cabinet. “It’s not a crime if it’s legal,” he mutters, but there’s no conviction in his voice. It sounds rehearsed, like it’s just something he tells himself so he can sleep at night.
Mac pulls open the shower room door without looking at me, and I walk in without being asked.
After setting the towel on a hook next to one of the open shower stalls, Mac puts the shampoo bottle on a shelf inside and turns on the faucet. The pipes are rusty and exposed, and they rattle and hiss louder than an oncoming earthquake.
Good.
“Just because it’s legal doesn’t make it right,” I say as Mac bends down to take off my shackles. “Attacking an innocent woman? Robbery? Rape? Isn’t that why you got into this job in the first place? To protect the good guys and punish the bad guys?”
“I don’t make the rules,” Mac snaps, obviously annoyed with my line of questioning. “I just enforce ’em.”
The shackles clatter to the ground as Mac stands, pressing a hand to the small of his back as his knees and random other joints snap, crackle, and pop.
“That’s apparent.” I snort, holding my wrists out for him to uncuff next. “The bad guys are literally getting away with murder while you’re busy shooting good guys in the head on live TV.”
Mac’s eyes slam up to mine the moment the second cuff falls free.
“Yeah, I know you’re the executioner. I figured it out as soon as you said you were a sniper. But it’s cool, man. You’re just doing what you gotta do, right?” I unzip my jumpsuit, pausing when I get to the sharpened toothbrush stashed in the waistband of my boxers. “And so am I.”
Grabbing the shiv, I catch Mac completely off guard as I plunge it into the side of his neck, using my left arm to block him from going for his gun. He yells in pain, but the thumps and rattles and hissing and splashing from the shower muffle his cry.
Mac goes for his gun with his left hand as I struggle with his right, but the awkward cross-body reach doesn’t allow him to flip the snap to unlock the weapon from his holster. Doing some kind of spin move, he twists out of my hold, but I grab his billy club and duck the second he gets a hand on his gun. When Mac spins around to shoot, I bash him in the kneecap with it, sending him to the floor. I grab the hand holding the gun on his way down and try to pry his fingers off by pulling his trigger finger back as far as it will go. He yells in pain and punches me in the side of the head with his free hand. Repeatedly. I feel his arthritic knuckles crunch against my skull. I shift my weight and curl around the hand holding the gun so that he can only punch me in the back now. Then, I bite his thumb and pull backward on his finger as hard as I fucking can until the gun falls free. We both scramble for it, sending it sliding across the tile floor.
“Shit,” I hiss right before Mac rears back and clocks me right in the jaw.
I see spots as I reach into the shower for the dropped billy club and crack him over the head with it. Instead of knocking him out, Mac’s eyes glaze over with rage, and he attacks me with everything he’s got.
Fists rain down on me as I back up into the scalding hot spray of the shower. I try to block his swings with one hand while using the other one to swing and stab at him with the club. I can’t connect with anything other than his sides and shoulders, so I change tactics and shove the club up under his chin, pushing until he can’t breathe and is forced to let go of me. The second he does, we both scramble for the gun again, and again it turns into a bloodbath. My ribs crack under his fists. His nose breaks against my palm. My elbow drops into his gut. His knee comes up to meet mine. What I have on Mac by way of youth and agility, he more than makes up for with skill. We are nothing but sopping wet fists and teeth and adrenaline and fear. But I have something Mac doesn’t have.
A damn good reason to live.
My lungs burn and my eyes burn and my entire fucking body feels like it’s been pulverized by a meat grinder as we wrestle under the searing hot water, but it’s not quite as bad as I let on. See, I might not be able to use Mac’s guilt or his vanity or even his sense of justice to get what I want, but he’s got something even easier to exploit.
P
ride.
Good thing I got that shit beat out of me by the eighth grade.
Leaving myself open to a few blows that feel like sledgehammers, I let Mac think he has the upper hand. I can almost see his ego swell as he lands a solid right cross to the cheekbone of the punk twenty-two-year-old who dared to take on the legendary Officer MacArthur. And I can almost hear it shatter into a million pieces when he rears back to clock me again and feels a solid steel cuff click into place around his wrist.
Scurrying backward out of the shower on my elbows, I watch as Mac’s eyes go wide in horror. He sits up on his haunches and thrashes in place as he realizes that I’ve handcuffed him to the shower pipe.
I reach the gun across the room just as he reaches for his taser, but when he holds it up, it’s dripping wet and completely worthless.
The look on his face as he drops the taser and raises his hands in the air is something I’ll never forget as long as I live. I’ve seen it on TV a few times now but never in person. Never staring down the barrel of my own gun.
It’s the look of a man who knows he’s about to die.
His nose is gushing blood, which the shower dilutes into a pink stream that courses over his swollen mouth and down his neck. His chest is heaving even harder than mine, but his hands aren’t shaking nearly as bad.
“You fought well, son.” He spits through the bloody water.
“So did you, old man.” I close one eye and aim for his forehead. “Between the eyes, right? That’s your style?”
He nods without remorse. “Instant kill.”
His words send a shiver down my wet, bruised spine as I tighten my finger around the trigger.
But I’m not like Mac.
I’m not a cold-blooded killer.
Which is exactly why the fuck I need him.
Rain
“You got it uploaded and everything?” I whisper as Flip closes his laptop.
“Uploaded. Broadcasted. It’s done.” He looks over at me, the blue digital glow from the servers illuminating his tired face.