Primus Unleashed

by Amber Wyatt

  “Jesus Christ,” whispered Milea up in the operations room into the shocked silence. He and the four supervisors on duty watched the carnage in D block unfold on the bank of screens in front of them. Running zombies flooded into the atrium, spreading out and hunting down shrieking inmates, who in turn rose up almost immediately, dead-eyed and gory, and turned on their erstwhile comrades, ripping into them with teeth and nails. Within a minute there was no one left alive in the open atrium. Zombies swarmed up the stairwells and pawed at the prisoners through the bars of the cell doors.

  Most of them cowered at the back of the cells, screaming in fear, but many of the cells on the first level were far too crowded for the inmates to move away from the doors. As soon as one inmate in a cell was dragged to the bars and bitten, he transformed horrifyingly quickly and started attacking the rest of his cellmates. And once that happened, it was all over in seconds. The story in each such cell ended the same way, with the last survivors at the back disappearing under a wave of ripping teeth from the ten new zombies packed into the tiny cell with them.

  Within two short, bloody minutes of the first zombie entering the atrium, the only people left alive were the guards in the guardroom and the occupants of six cells spread around the second level. There were only a handful of inmates in each cell, backed up against the wall as far away as they could from the hundreds of zombies trying to reach in through the bars and get them.

  The D block guards had radioed for help and Milea told them to sit tight and not to worry, the National Guard was on the way. Feeling numb, Milea called the National Guard commander and updated him with the information that they had lost control of the administration offices and two entire cell blocks of the prison, including their prisoners and a few guards, and that there were now hundreds of zombies. Suddenly someone grabbed his shoulder.

  “Sir, the CRT!” Lamoureux turned Milea around and pointed at the screens showing the recreation yard. As per orders the tactical team in full riot gear had finished clearing A and B blocks and were making their way through the recreation yard and into the fenced lanes leading to D block.

  Milea put down the phone, grabbed up the walkie talkie and keyed the transmit button.

  “CRT stand down, stand down, do not enter D block. Sergeant Ang do you hear me? Do not enter D block.”

  “Did anybody catch that?” asked Sergeant Ang. They were walking down the fenced lane from the recreation yard towards D block and the steel fencing and the electrical current surging through the top wires were playing havoc with his radio reception.

  “Just some white noise and something about entering D,” replied his second in command.

  “Jeez, enough already. We’re on our way for God’s sake.” Ang grumbled. “Okay you guys,” he turned and shouted at the guards he had picked up from B block. “Just let my teams get in first and you follow on behind. Keep those fucking muzzles pointed up in a safe direction.” With the shields and batons his teams were already carrying, it was not really practical for them to use the shotguns slung on their backs, so Ang had commandeered the extra guards to act as shooters and had passed out the long, two-handed weapons to them. “Don’t anybody lock and load unless I give the order. The last thing we need is anyone accidentally discharging a shot.”

  A and B blocks had been completely quiet, the prisoners all sat in their cells under lockdown and the guards waiting for further orders in their guard stations. Ang saw no reason why this last block would not be exactly the same. They would simply push in, check that the atrium was clear and report to the guard station for an update and to see whether there were any problems. Then he would report into the warden that his three blocks were clear and they could just sit back and maybe await orders to assist the National Guard in cordoning off C block. The last thing Ang needed now was for some eager guard to accidentally shoot one of his team in the back with a shotgun.

  “Okay you guys,” he turned as they approached the doorway, addressing both his teams and the shooters, “before we go in, we’re going to do a quick rehearsal right here, on how I want you to enter the door and move into the block. Make sure you keep those shotgun muzzles up at all times.”

  Ang positioned the first few CRT members ready with their riot shields at the front, and then two files behind them of CRT on one side, and the new guards with shotguns on the other. Then he made them move through an imaginary door and form up on the other side. It was childishly easy and the guards laughed and grumbled good-naturedly about being made to do it.

  “Hey don’t complain, guys,” Ang admonished them. “You did it fine just now, but you won’t be laughing if you fuck it up for real. Let’s do it properly now. Everyone ready?”

  They answered affirmatively, forming up behind him. He turned and opened the door to D block and waved his men through, into the dark hallway beyond.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Prison Break

  In the prison infirmary Lamar stepped back, confused, and wiped a forearm across his sweating brow. He had finished punching out the outline of another door into the back wall which was supposed to lead him into the staff car park. The first layer of the wall together with the insulation that had been inside it, were now lying in pieces behind him. But the final layer of thin concrete left between him and the underground garage was proving strangely resistant, as if his powerful strikes were being dampened somehow. He leaned forward and peered closely at the edges of his hole. There were bolts of some sort protruding through from the other side of the wall.

  Damn. Something must be attached on the other side, a cabinet or something. It was supporting the remaining wall against his strikes with the steel bar. Maybe I should just move to the side and knock through another hole, he thought to himself, but frowned as he realized that there was the possibility he would just find another cabinet there as well. All he would have achieved was to waste more of his precious time. Lamar fingered the edges of the hole on the inside layer of the wall. It would be far quicker to just chip this away and widen his hole until he found the edge of whatever it was on the other side, knock through the thin concrete around it and just push it out as a whole section. He grunted in satisfaction as he decided on his plan and quickly looked behind him to check that he was safe to carry on. The barrier of beds and filing cabinets he had pushed up against the hole leading back into the hallway was untouched. Lamar raised his bar to start work again.

  Inside the guard station in D block, Bourne and the other five guards had their backs up to the wall, eyes wide, gaping at the horrific spectacle on the other side of the window in front of them. They could not even see the cell block any more. Their view was completely blocked by countless zombies climbing on top of each other, pawing at the blood stained, bulletproof glass as they tried to get at the live prey they could see only a few feet away inside the guardroom.

  The warden had checked in on the radio to confirm that they were still alive a couple of minutes ago, but since then there had been silence from the outside world. The only sound in the room was their own quick breathing and the pounding on the windows. The horror of their situation was made even more surreal, since they recognized most of the zombies pressed up against the window. They were the inmates that the guards had known for months and years, familiar faces now twisted in rabid hunger and bearing terrible, bloody wounds.

  Suddenly a cellphone rang, startling everyone in the room. It was Friedman’s.

  “Hello?” The young guard answered it automatically, not looking away from the zombies on the other side of the window. There was a garbled question from the caller. “Yes, yes I’m fine, I’m okay… I know… I’m looking at them right now. I’m safe for now. We’re all locked in the guard room.”

  The voice on the other end of the call became much more agitated and went on for some time at a higher pitch. Sounds like a woman. Friedman looks pretty upset, Bourne thought curiously, watching the other man. He could not for the life of him imagine what could be worse news than being trap
ped in a small room by a horde of starving zombies. Maybe Friedman’s girlfriend just told him she’s pregnant?

  “What?” Friedman said in shock and looked down at the floor as he focused on whatever the caller was saying to him. “Are you sure?” He sat down on the chair, momentarily ignoring the zombie horde and concentrating on his phone call. “Are you sure?” he repeated, “I can’t believe it. It’s not true. It’s not true!”

  “What’s up Friedman?” Bourne said without taking his eyes from the window.

  “That was my cousin,” Friedman ended the call and sat looking at the floor, as if in shock. “Her husband is in the National Guard unit that’s on its way here. He said they just now got word from their CO that most of the prison is overrun and their mission has changed from rescue and assistance, to containment and clearance. Their orders are to secure a quarantine perimeter around the prison, and then move in and kill everything here. They have been specifically ordered not to try and rescue any survivors since it’s certain that we have already been infected by the zombie virus. He called her, told her to call me straight away and tell me to get the hell out of here.”

  “Oh shit!” Bourne tore his gaze from the zombies at the window to look at the CCTV screens on the counter in front of him. How the hell am I going to get out? From the outside camera on the other side of the atrium, the guardroom was simply invisible, totally buried under a mound of zombies. He shivered involuntarily. There must be hundreds of them. There were small clusters of zombies around the front of some of the cells on the second level. He guessed that meant there were some inmates in there who were still alive. As if I give a shit.

  There were four guards in the room with him. They had all armed themselves with revolvers from the emergency locker in the guardroom but there had only been a single box of fifty rounds in the locker to share between all of them. There was no way they could shoot their way out of this. Then he saw the cameras from the recreation yard showing the CRT coming in towards the entrance to D block, and he was struck with inspiration.

  “Everyone quick, hide behind the desks,” Bourne snapped at the other guards. They looked at him blankly, “I said get behind the fucking desks, right now. Zombies are dumb right? I don’t want them to be able to see us. CRT is about to come in from the rec yard hit them from the other side. We are going to use them as a distraction. When the zombies’ attention turns towards them, we’re going to make a run for it, okay?”

  “What about the CRT?” said Hitchings. He was an older, white-haired guard that Bourne privately thought should have retired at least twenty years previously, but he was the warden’s uncle or something and they kept him on so that he could get the state to cover his medical insurance. Bourne was always worried that the old boy would die of a stroke or heart attack when he was on shift with him. Still, he had to admit grudgingly, the old-timer always did his work well, and without slacking off as much as men half his age. And the inmates respected him for some mysterious reason. Bourne just wished he was not so goddamned old. He would be useless as back up if things turned violent in the yard.

  “Shouldn’t we warn the CRT?” asked Hitchings in his quavering voice.

  “No!” hissed Bourne. Fuck the CRT, he thought. “There’s twenty of them with shotguns and riot armor. They can handle it, easy. If we warn them off, they might not even try to enter the block. They are the only chance we have to get out of this fucking room.” Personally, Bourne did not care whether CRT could handle it or not, except insofar as that as long as they were still alive and shooting, the zombies’ attention would be completely focused on them and not on Bourne himself. The other guards were all dutifully crouched down behind the counter and desks now. Bourne reached up to the counter and flicked a switch.

  “Okay,” he said. “I just opened the gate to C block. Once CRT gets stuck in and these zombies move away, we are going to slip out the door, down the back hallway past the showers and into C block.”

  “But there are zombies in C block,” whispered Hitchings urgently.

  “No, that’s where all these ones came from,” Bourne gestured upwards at the window, where the zombies had indeed quietened down now and were just standing still, looking into what would appear to them to be an empty room. “Besides we aren’t going into C block. We’ll cut left and head straight out by the admin offices, past the infirmary into the carpark and get the hell out.”

  “What about the inmates?” whispered Friedman, his hand reaching up towards the console which controlled the cell doors. “They deserve a chance to get out too.”

  “Are you fucking crazy?” Bourne was furious. One of the zombies twitched towards the window at the sound of his voice and Bourne remembered to whisper. “You open those cell doors and all the other cells full of zombies are going to open up too,” he hissed angrily.

  “I know the cell numbers where there are survivors, I saw them on the CCTV,” Friedman continued, his jaw set stubbornly, “I can open just those cell doors. They deserve a chance too, Bourne.”

  “NO,” Bourne said emphatically. “You saw how quickly they can get ripped apart and transform. You think you’re doing them a favor but, they’re going to get eaten up straight away, and all you’re going to do is give us another fifty zombies to worry about.” Bourne’s face was red with his voice almost choked with anger. “And we don’t need no more fucking zombies, okay?”

  Back at the infirmary Lamar set his metal bar down with a clang and took in a deep breath. Finally. He had widened the hole on the inside layer of wall surprisingly easily and very quickly established the boundaries of the cabinet on the other side of the wall through the simple expedient of tapping the wall with his pole and noting where the sound changed from a solid thump to hollow echo. Then he had cracked open the thin concrete around the outline of whatever it was blocking him, and now all he had to do was push it out into the carpark.

  Drying his hands on his pants, Lamar placed both palms flat against the wall, braced his back leg and pushed. His only worry was that there was some kind of sewage or waste water pipe on the other side. His father had been in the city council engineering department his whole career, and had shown Lamar how big and strong those steel pipes were. If that was what was on the other side of the wall it would need a tank to knock it down. His huge back muscles bunched like pythons moving under his skin, as he locked out his arms and pushed as hard as he could into the wall.

  It shifted easily, and he staggered, surprised, as the wall fell out a few inches before being caught up on something. Lamar looked between the cracks. Good. It wasn’t sewage or drainage pipes. It looked like some kind of electrical cables holding up the section of wall on either side, preventing it from falling out. Those bolts were probably just holding up a junction box on the other side of the wall. He grinned. No sewage pipes, no problem. He kicked away a few fragments of concrete to clear the floor, reset his feet and heaved again. Dozens of electrical wires and fiber-optic conduits ripped out of the massive junction box and the entire section of wall plunged to the ground with a huge crash. Lamar staggered forward, surprised at how easily it had broken, and fell on all fours on top of the slab. He laughed as he stood up, dusting down his pants. Time to steal a car and get the hell out of prison.

  He froze as he saw the figure in a white coat walk out of the shadows in front of him. It was the prison doctor. Lamar held his hands up in a warning gesture. He could easily overpower the tiny woman if she tried to stop him, but she had always treated him with respect and he did not want to hurt her.

  “Hey Doc, I don’t want any trouble… oh shit…” As she came fully into the light, he realized that half of her throat was missing, and her eyes were fixed on him with a manic intensity. She was one of them. He never even saw the other two zombies that dropped out of the shadows on to his back.

  Across the entire prison, as soon as Lamar destroyed the junction box, cell doors unlocked and started to open. In the operations room all the CCTV screens went blank, and while M
ilea and the ops room staff tried to get them back online, Lamoureux dealt with the flurry of queries over the radio from the guards in A and B blocks. The inmates in those two blocks were calm but curious and were wandering out of their cells, now that they thought the lockdown was over. Lamoureux instructed the guards to tell the inmates that the lockdown was not over and to order them to get back in their cells. The doors had opened because of some fault that was being dealt with as soon as possible.

  “What the hell is going on?” Milea demanded, “Get these cameras back online, I need to know what is going on in D.”

  “It’s not us, sir,” said one of the men, “There has been a catastrophic failure somewhere in the system. Cameras are down across the entire prison and the default protocols are opening all security doors. The system was set up like this for safety reasons in case there was a major fire or earthquake or something. My guess is that something has happened to the main security server in the staff carpark.”

  In D block the last surviving prisoners screamed as their cell doors opened and zombies poured in, clawing and biting. The noise pulled the zombies away from the apparently empty guardroom and they spread out across the atrium, looking up at the cells where shouts of pain and rage erupted from half a dozen, desperate last struggles. But then, after a few moments, the noises stopped and the zombies in the block turned into frozen statues again.

  “I’m going to fucking kill you myself, Friedman,” whispered Bourne furiously. “I told you to keep those cell doors shut!”