Primus Unleashed

by Amber Wyatt

  The brewer, Eric ‘Cutter’ Finkelstein, was a frigging genius. A Jewish chartered accountant with a sideline in sadistic murder, his toilet tank moonshine was nothing special in that it was made no differently from all the other illicit alcohol in the prison. It was brewed out of oranges, sugar and water, with a ketchup kicker to start the fermentation. But his greatest talent was the ability to produce something that did not taste like bile. It actually tasted good. Really good. The only problem was that the dude was also a homicidal nutcase, and his punishment for non-payment was enough to chill a brother’s blood to the bone. In fact, Finkelstein had only recently got out of solitary for what he had done to the last guy that had not paid on time. He really belonged in a psych ward, but since his hooch was so delicious, everybody was prepared to put up with his volatile mood swings.

  There was only one day per week when both C and D blocks were scheduled for the rec yard at the same time, to mingle and socialize, and Dwayne had just walked into the yard when the alarm had gone off and all the guards shouted at them to head back inside. The ethnic gang groupings had barely started their greetings and handshake rituals. Chunky Hispanics with bald heads and facial tattoos preened and cautiously greeted their opposite numbers from the other block. The Aryan brotherhood and the whites were already up on the bleachers, in strict hierarchical order. The most rabidly racist and overtly Nazi-tattooed Vikings sat on the top benches, with all their hangers-on, terrified of the blacks and the Latinos, clustered on the lower seats below them.

  Dwayne and the rest of the African-Americans had the fence and bleachers in the shade on the eastern side. The tiny group of APIs, clustered near the entrance to the recreation yard, comprising Vietnamese, Indians, Cambodians and whoever else the other gangs did not give a fuck about, all huddled together for protection. Exercise areas and the basketball courts in the middle were the only areas where the rival gangs exercised a cautious truce, and where the armed guards in the towers kept their eyes open for trouble. The never-ending racial tension always meant that the fragile peace could erupt into bloody murder in the blink of an eye, over any perceived slight or disrespect. Say, for example, a brother being late with his payment of noodles, Dwayne thought wryly to himself. He ignored the guards calls to head back into lockdown and pushed his way through the crowd towards the inmates coming out of their gate from C block.

  “What the fuck is going on,” Albert growled in a voice that cut through the loud hubbub. One of the biggest black men Dwayne had ever seen, over 6’6” and easily 300 pounds, Albert Washington was the bodybuilding king of the penitentiary and his voice was a deep, bass roar, as low as Friedman’s was high. Albert and his equally gigantic training buddy Lamar were already stripped to the waist, their orange prison tops removed and tied around their waists. The two giants were warming up by the weights and benches, shrugging their shoulders and clearly uninterested in stopping their pre-workout routine. Dwayne worked out with the two of them pretty regularly. Despite his smaller size, he was surprisingly strong and had earned their grudging respect. And in prison, ramen and respect were the only commodities that mattered.

  With the wailing alarm and the indignant shouting of the other inmates obscuring all other noise, Friedman, the closest guard to the exercise area simply could not be heard. He was surrounded by a crowd of shouting prisoners and in his inexperience, whatever he was saying to them was riling them up even more, instead of calming them down.

  Dwayne noticed a sudden drop in the noise behind him. He turned to look and frowned. The Aryan brotherhood had abandoned the stands and was sprinting, en masse, towards the gates to get back into their blocks. That did not make sense at all. They piled straight through the APIs without stopping and even without any of the usual abuse and insults.

  One of the guards, Bourne, was running with them. Bourne was a pale, Irish-American, racist cracker, always ready to write up a yellow or brown skin for a made-up infraction or, if out of sight of the cameras, to give a brother a damn good hiding with the baton or the boot, and always deep in cahoots with those Aryan motherfuckers. Dwayne frowned as he realized that Bourne was not shepherding or moving them along. He was running with them. Almost as if they were on the same team, running from something invisible in the yard. On impulse he looked up, squinting into the bright midday sun, and a small chill went down his spine as he saw that the armed guards had abandoned their towers, doors flapping open, and were sprinting along the catwalks back to the main building. Some bad shit is going down.

  In the rest of the yard it was just chaos and noise. The guards trying to shout at the prisoners were drowned out by the noise, and with the exception of the Aryan Brotherhood, nobody was making a move back towards the gates to their blocks. Dwayne had a bad, bad feeling. Nothing concrete, but some instinct in his gut told him this was an abnormal event and he should pay attention to what was going on around him. He began to think maybe it was even worth pissing off Finkelstein for another day, and started weaving his way back through the crowd towards the gate.

  “Listen up there is an emergency situation, everyone needs to move back into their respective cell blocks right now,” the guard supervisor repeated over the PA. He kept repeating himself to no purpose. Nobody moved. The frustration in the guard’s voice grew with each ignored announcement, and he kept turning up the volume to no effect. Then the warden himself came on over the loudspeakers.

  “All personnel listen in! There has been a zombie outbreak within the prison. Everyone is at risk. All inmates move back to your cells immediately for your own safety. Lockdown will commence in four minutes. Anyone not safely in their cells by then will be left out in the open to fend for themselves. All guards report to your nearest security station now. Do not attempt to get back to your posts, just get to the nearest security station and lock yourselves in. CRT is gearing up now to clear all the common areas starting with A block. National Guard is en route and will be here directly. Now, move your asses!”

  Long before he had finished speaking, complete bedlam had broken out in the yard. As soon as they had heard the words ‘zombie outbreak’ the crowd had surged like a human tsunami towards the two narrow gates and the fenced-in lanes back to their cell blocks. Dwayne was carried along in the heaving mass, but was totally focused and alert. Moments like this were when control over the inmates was temporarily impossible, and very often homemade shanks came out and grudges and scores were settled in blood. But this time he could see it was different; nobody was screwing around, everyone was panicking and running with just one thought, to get back to the safety of the cells.

  Suddenly his wrist was grabbed in a grip like a vice, and he was spun around straight into the leering face of Eric ‘Cutter’ Finkelstein.

  “Hi Dwayne,” Finkelstein grinned manically. “Running off without paying me?”

  “Oh Cutter, hey man, I got your shit right here.” Dwayne had nearly pissed himself. He groped in the back of his waistband for where he had tucked away the packets of noodles.

  “Forget it, it’s too busy right now. Pay me next week. No problem,” Finkelstein winked and sprinted off through the crowd towards C block, punching people in the back, left and right to clear his path. Dwayne saw them falling or jerking away and did not understand until he saw that Finkelstein had a shiv in each hand, and each punch was a stab to the kidney or liver. Some of the men fell, disappearing under the feet of the panicked mob, and did not get back up.

  The packed mass of men moved surprisingly fast and Dwayne quickly found himself swept along into the atrium of the cell block. There all movement stopped as the prisoners thronged around the bottlenecks of the two stairwells leading to the cells above.

  “Lockdown in two minutes,” said the guard over the loudspeakers.

  “Shit,” Dwayne cursed, people had given up even trying to get to their own cells, they were just piling into the first cell that they passed. The nearest cells to the stairs on the first level above him were already packed with panicked prisone
rs, and more were fighting to get in, blocking access to the already crowded cells beyond them. Prisoners moved as fast as they could up the steps to the next level but it was still too slow, he was never going to make it up to a vacant cell before the lockdown. He could see that all the guards had made it into the guard station at the end of the block, and even now were standing by the controls that would lock every cell door.

  Then he had a brainwave. The showers. They were on the ground level around the back of the guard station, but that section had originally been an old dorm room before being refurbished into the ablutions block. The entrance was still sealed by a full-strength cell gate whenever lockdown went into effect. He would be safe there.

  Dwayne discreetly slipped back between two men immediately behind him who ignored him and shoved their way forward towards the stairs, and slowly made his way through the crowd, back towards the gate to the yard. He did not want everyone to catch on to the same idea and block him from getting there. Besides, some fight had broken out at the base of the stairwell and movement forward was impossible. But near the gate to the rec yard was another corridor that led around the side, past the commissary, past the guard station and straight to the shower block.

  “Lockdown in one minute,” said the loudspeakers.

  “Jesus!” Dwayne was alone in the hallway, and he started sprinting as fast as he could. Those fucking guards were not looking at the clock. There was no way it had been a minute since the last announcement.

  As he passed the commissary he skidded to a stop. He could not resist it, the door was wide open, obviously abandoned by panicked staff. He leaped inside, gaped around wildly, then grabbed a whole carton of ramen noodles before carrying on running for his life towards the showers.

  Dan Milea, the warden, was not in his office with its polished walnut writing desk and his customized, leather Easyboy chair. He was down in the central security operations room watching the CCTV screens and listening to the reports coming in from each block. It was a compact room and crowded with the four men on duty, plus Milea standing behind them.

  “Warden,” the duty supervisor turned to talk to him, “A and B blocks report all inmates in their cells, guards in stations and all civilian staff evacuated to guard stations.” His voice was remarkably calm given the situation. Milea liked the man, Lamoureux, always steady under pressure and he thanked his lucky stars that he was on duty today.

  “C and D blocks?” Milea asked. They were the ones that concerned him the most. Inmates from both blocks had been out in the recreation yard and were the furthest away from their cells when the alarm had been raised.

  “No response from C, sir. The guard supervisor there reported two maybe three zombies coming out of the back from the infirmary area and then said he was locking the cells and evacuating his guards to B block. There’s none of our people there now. I don’t know why but camera feeds are completely down from C. He probably turned them off by accident when he shut down the guard station.” Lamoureux sighed, “D block is a fucking mess, if you’ll excuse my language sir. Only half the inmates are in their cells. Bourne reports at least fifty still fighting on the stairwells. All the guards are in the guard station as per orders. Do you want them to move out and sort out the inmates, sir?”

  “No,” Milea looked at the screens thoughtfully, “no they should be okay. The outbreak is in C block and lockdown will seal off all blocks from each other anyway.” He picked up the radio on the table in front of him to talk to the CRT commander.

  “Sergeant Ang, is your team ready?”

  “Yes sir, two teams ready, twelve of us. We are geared up and ready to go on your command, Warden.” Sergeant Marcus Ang had been seconded in from the local sheriff’s office while he was under suspension from active duty, for the duration of an investigation into some unfounded accusations of unreasonable use of force to arrest some scumbag. He was a muscular, solidly built Asian-American and another reliable, safe pair of hands that Milea always appreciated in emergencies. Anger management problems and a heavy hand with perps were not seen as disadvantages when working here in the corrections department. He had been a natural choice to head up the Correctional Response Team, especially once the sheriff’s office had informed Milea that although his office had settled out of court with the plaintiff and no charges would be pressed against Ang, it was highly likely that he would be suspended from street duty “indefinitely”.

  “Excellent. Commence clearance of A and then B blocks. Bypass C completely, we have a report of two maybe three zombies there, so leave that to the National Guard. Exit B into the rec yard and enter D block from the rec yard. Keep in constant radio contact throughout.”

  “Copy that, sir. A and B. Bypass C via the rec yard and clear D. We’re moving now.”

  Milea turned to Lamoureux.

  “Tell all blocks to initiate full lockdown now.”

  Back in the shower block Dwayne flinched as the iron gate next to him jerked into life and slowly started sliding shut. Finally, thank God! Having been terrified that he would not reach safety before the gates closed, he had cursed and sweated as they remained open for endless seconds as he waited for zombies to come down the corridor and corner him in the showers.

  “Hold that door!” roared Albert’s deep voice. The huge bodybuilder was running down the hallway with Lamar, their heavy footsteps echoing off the tiled walls. Albert side-stepped into the showers through the narrowing gap with surprising agility, but Lamar kept running.

  “Lamar!” Albert shouted, but the giant man ran off, his only reply the sound of his pounding footsteps getting fainter as he disappeared down the hallway. “Dumb motherfucker,” Albert panted, “he said he wants to go for C. Thinks he’s got some plan to break out of the joint while all this shit is going down.”

  The iron bars of the gate slid slowly by and a few seconds later came to a stop with a meaty clunk as the locks engaged.

  “Shit I hope he made it,” Albert turned around and Dwayne suddenly realized his hands were full. He had two of the long metal weights bars from the rec yard clutched in one hand and Dwayne grinned as he saw that Albert had also swiped a tub of protein powder and one of the boxes of ramen as he had passed the commissary as well.

  Albert saw what he was looking at and his face split into a huge smile.

  “Twenty-four packs of chicken flavor, brother! I’m a rich man. What flavor did you get?”

  “Ha,” Dwayne laughed. “I didn’t even check.” He looked at the side of his box. “I got barbecue pork.” The two men grinned at each other like schoolboys.

  “I thought those things were chained to the ground?” Dwayne pointed at the weights bars in Albert’s hands. They had indeed been chained to the benches last time he had seen them, to stop inmates beating each other with heavy pieces of metal.

  “Are you kidding? State ain’t bought new weights in thirty years, ever since they decided it wasn’t a good idea for us cons to get too bulked up. Those old chains are like tissue to a stud like me. Shit, I deadlift seven hundred pounds for reps.” Albert looked at the bars, then at Dwayne. “Here,” he tossed the smaller 12lb bar to Dwayne and kept the larger 45lb one for himself. “Zombie outbreak, fuck that. I thought we could use them like kung fu staffs, know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Cool,” Dwayne put down his box of ramen, and tried swinging the long metal bar a few times. It was perfect. Of course, after all this was over and the lockdown was lifted, the guards would shit themselves that the prisoners had makeshift weapons. They would just have to leave them in the showers he guessed, regretfully.

  There was a low moan and the sound of a footstep from the shower stalls behind them. Goosebumps came up on Dwayne’s arms and his blood turned to ice. Both men whirled to face the doorway to the showers with their metal poles clutched in their hands. They slowly backed up towards the locked and unyielding iron gate behind them.

  “Nigga, did you check this place was empty before we was locked in?” Albert hissed, his face a
shen with terror. Dwayne shook his head, without taking his wide eyes from the showers, and raised one finger to his lips for silence. The two men gripped their bars with white knuckles, and froze in place, facing the shower stalls, their backs against the cold, merciless bars of the door.

  Further along the hallway, heading around the back of C block, Lamar clutched his weights bar in front of his chest as he slowly stalked towards the administrative offices. He and Albert had each taken two of the six-foot steel poles, but he had left one of them behind him, jammed in the locking mechanism of the door between C and D blocks. He had used the lighter one to block open the door and now he had the heavier bar ready to smash zombie heads. Lamar was a thinker, and seeing as how he was in the joint for twenty-three years with no chance of parole, what he spent a great deal of his time thinking about, was how to break out.

  In fact, one of his daily fantasies had been to take advantage of exactly what was happening now; some kind of riot or disturbance which would allow him to slip into the back corridors of C block, which was also where most of the administration functions were housed. The penitentiary had been upgraded and expanded twice since its original construction in 1936. His sister had given him the idea for his escape plan the last time she visited. She mentioned that she had met some guy in a bar who turned out to be one of the last contractors that had built the administration block and the infirmary back in 1998. The state had installed all the correct security doors, built to federal standards, but to save on costs, the walls of the entire office block had been made of precast sections of semi-load bearing, insulated wall. The contractor had helpfully informed Lamar’s sister that it was important they had installed the sections the right way around. The insulation in the walls was sandwiched between two layers of concrete, one 1.5 inches thick, the other 2.5 inches thick. They had had to make sure that the thicker layer was on the inside of all the offices so that the interior designer could attach shelving and lighting fixtures to it.