Authors: Adam Millard
With the dogs barking at each other, the eight guards were gathered in one area between the walls, discussing why it was that they had not been relieved of their posts. A few of the anxious men argued that they needed to get home to their wives, for they would be worried. One of the men continued to attempt to get through on the two-way but, as had been the case for over an hour, there was nothing but silence.
They decided to give it a few more minutes before sending a man in to investigate further.
*
It was no wonder the prisoners detested Charles Dean so unequivocally; he had built himself a very nice quarters on the side of the prison. Everything, it seemed, was antique, or would be by the end of the decade. As a prison governor he was certainly astute, but as a collector of fine arts which would eventually fetch him a fortune at auction, he was as shrewd as any dealer. Marla wondered whether any of the prisoners had, at some time or another, made plans to relieve the governor of a few of his items. Probably. The problem was, though, that when a prisoner was escorted through to Charles Dean's office, usually by at least two guards, past all of the good stuff hanging on the walls and resting temptingly inside alcoves, it would be near impossible to cause a distraction large enough to sneak anything away, which then made her wonder of any of the guards had had the same idea. She knew that Tyler was a corrupt fucker of a man, so it was likely, at some point, that he had been tempted by the goods on display, as he had been when he had assaulted Marla. She was sure that a man possessed of such weak will would find it almost impossible to ignore the antiquities and their obvious price-tags. In fact, it wouldn't surprise her to discover that Officer Tyler had already embezzled a few minor items just to test the governor's knowledge of the items he actually possessed. It was simple, really. Start off small, work up to something worth enough money to retire on. Charles Dean was not getting any younger, and his memory was probably not as good as it once had been. Fuck, you could probably swipe half of the things lining the quarters and he would be so caught up in prison business that he wouldn't notice until you were halfway across the country.
Marla felt the effects of the whisky as her head began to ache and buzz. She had to drive home yet, which was probably not such a good idea, but the sooner she got to bed and slept it off, the better.
Noticing the eerie silence for the first time, she called out: 'Hello?' It was, she knew, the worst thing to do; there was always the chance that somebody would reply, and being in a prison, where hundreds of violent men were incarcerated and the guards were not much better, a reply was not necessarily a good thing.
She ambled down the hallway, not knowing where she was going. This was the first time Charles Dean had taken her to his office since she accepted the position, and she couldn't remember which direction they had come from a few hours before, but why would she? She hadn't expected to be trying to find her own way out.
She came to a T as she reached the end of the hallway.
'Oh, great!' she said, looking to the east and then the west. 'Decisions, decisions.'
But, luckily for her, the decision was already made.
From the east came a man, dragging himself through the hallway, smearing blood against the cream wall. He was growling. His contorted face oozed with dark drool as he neared.
Marla screamed.
*
She began to backtrack, hoping that the office belonging to Charles Dean had a lock on the inside of the door. If it had, she hadn't noticed it earlier, but then she had been overwhelmed by the many egotistical certificates hanging on the walls; why would she have been checking to see if the office had sufficient security?
The man kept coming, sliding across the wall, leaving behind a trail of blood from a wounded shoulder. Never once, though, did he break into a run, or quicken his pace. He was either confident of catching up to Marla, or too wounded to run. Either way, Marla didn't care. She needed to call for help, and she needed to barricade herself in the governor's office. As she slid in through the door, she yelled up the hallway: 'Stay away! Stay the fuck away!' The man didn't falter, just kept on coming.
She swung the office door shut and looked down to the handle. There was nothing; not even a chain. Charles Dean certainly put a lot of faith in his guards, enough to warrant the lackadaisical approach to office-security. The absence of even a deadbolt, though, was bad news, and Marla realised this as soon as there was a thud against the door. Her shoulder jarred from the impact as the man slammed into it again. She bit her tongue, and blood began to dribble out in a fine rivulet. It hurt, but she didn't have time to acknowledge the pain as the man growled and pushed the door wide enough to slide a hand through.
Marla screamed. Her instincts were telling her to bite the hand, but she
couldn't
. Looking down at it, she could see that it was basically an open wound. Knuckles were exposed, and sinewy flesh hung loosely from the thumb.
A wrist followed the hand, and before she knew what was happening the hand was smothering her face, trying to push her away from the door so that it could gain proper entry.
Breathless, and out of options, Marla knew that she had to step away. By letting the man fall into the office, she would be back on a level playing field. She knew what she had to do, and she knew where to find a weapon.
She stepped away from the door, an exhalation, a whimper of fear. Had she made the right move?
The door crashed open; the man's momentum saw him fall to his knees and sprawl out on the fancy rug beneath him.
Marla had a few seconds, that was all, and she wasted none of them. She ran across to the governor's desk and plucked up the paperweight. She had spotted it earlier, whilst sitting at the desk sipping whisky. She abhorred it; the little boat at the centre of the glass served to signify that Charles Dean was a prick. When she had sat staring at it, she had never envisioned using it as a weapon, but now that was exactly what she was going to do.
She paced back to where the man was clambering to his feet.
'What the fuck?' she cried. She hit the man on the side of the face with the paperweight, but not as hard as she should have. The man barely flinched; his eyes seemed to grow darker, and he was up on one foot before Marla managed to hit him again, this time with enough force to put him back down.
'Fuck you!' she snapped. The man moaned, tried to crawl to his feet, but Marla wouldn't allow it. She hit him again. A chunk of the man's head came away from the force of the paperweight. Had she meant to hurt the maniac so fatally? Had she had a choice in the matter?
He rolled over onto his back and, as he stared up at her with black eyes and a sneer, she brought the paperweight down once more.
*
'How many of them are out there?' Billy Toombs asked.
Shane, who was staring through a gap in the barricade, said, 'Hard to tell. I can see three of them across the way.'
On the landing opposite, the three men were roaming up and down the row. Shane had watched the men leave their cells, watched them get attacked by other men, watched them die, and was now watching them as they wandered aimlessly around, bouncing off cells, crawling on all fours and eating the men who had lost the fight. The fear he felt when the realisation of what he was witnessing had been immense, more than he had ever felt before. The last time he had felt so helpless and unsure was sitting in the car outside the liquor shop, waiting for the moment to make his move.
'We need to get out of here,' Billy said. The knife he had been holding throughout was still clenched tightly in his hand, so tightly that his knuckles were white. 'It's only a matter of time before they find us. We're much safer out in the open.'
It was true. In the cell, they had nowhere to run. One, maybe two of them, they could handle, but any more than that and Shane knew that they would be in serious trouble.
'We go out there,' Shane said, 'then we'll need to go prepared. I saw what those things are capable of; they don't seem to feel pain the way we would.'
Billy shrugged and began to look around the cell for something,
anything
, that they could use to protect themselves.
He had his knife, that was
enough
for him, but Shane was unarmed. To venture out of the cell without at least something to keep those things at bay was practically suicide.
Shane moved away from the bed, which was still blocking the cell door, and helped to search.
'Where are the guards?' Billy asked.
'Even the guards wouldn't have been able to stop those things,' Shane replied. 'The guards would have battered them a few times with their batons, but those fucking things are
relentless
.'
'You saying they're all dead?' asked Billy. He opened the drawer to his bedside table and started to remove the books that had taken up residence there, stacking them neatly on the floor next to the bed.
'I'm saying, it stands a chance that once the guards realised they were fucked, they disappeared, the ones that were lucky did, anyway.'
Shane watched as Billy Toombs cleared the drawer of its contents and pulled the empty wood from its hole. There was an audible crunch as twisted metal snapped away from wood. Satisfied, Billy tossed the empty drawer aside and pulled at the aluminium runner, which was still attached to the main structure of the cabinet.
'You know,' Shane said as his cellmate became increasingly frustrated with the recalcitrant drawer runner, 'you really need to see somebody about that temper of yours.'
Billy smiled; his breathlessness prevented him from laughing out loud.
With one final twist, and a foreign word that Shane didn't think translated as anything nice, the aluminium runner came away.
'Nice,' Shane said. Billy handed it to him, and immediately it felt good in his hand. It was light, which was always good, and the end had twisted creating a sharp point. It was, given the circumstances, the best they were going to muster.
They moved the bed away from the gate, trying to keep the noise to an absolute minimum. Shane kept a close eye on the numbers outside the cell, and as far as he could see there were only four of them on the same level. The next level up, though, that one seemed to be swamped by them. Since there were only ten steps between levels, it paid to stay as silent as possible.
In another part of the prison, though, somebody screamed. It was faint, but both Shane and Billy heard it, and it sounded like a woman.
With the bed pushed aside, and their weapons in hand, Shane looked deep into Billy's eyes, and for the first time since they had met three years ago, the hulking half-Indian, half-Irishman looked frightened.
'Ready?' Shane asked.
Billy swallowed hard. 'As I'm ever gonna be.'
Shane slid the gate across.
*
At first, it didn't seem like the things noticed them. They managed to edge across the row quietly enough, and for a second, Shane believed that they would make it all the way to the end and could slip away down past ablutions, and who knew from there.
Then it saw them, one of the men on all fours across the landing. It peered through the metal railings, still on all fours, and let out a blood-curdling scream. The other three forgot what they were doing, and turned to see what all of the fuss was about.
'Oh, shit!' Shane said, and that was when they decided that stealth had gone out of the window, and now it was time to put some distance between those things and themselves.
'This way,' Billy said, leading the way. Shane glanced across his shoulder to find that two of the four things were now following them; the one on all fours was too busy ferreting away in the carcass of some poor fuck, and the other had tripped over a body whilst attempting to make chase.
'They're not so fast,' Shane said. 'we should be able to outrun them.'
Billy shook his head. 'I've seen shit like this in films,' he said, jumping over two bodies that were spread across the floor blocking their way. Shane did the same. 'You underestimate them, you die. Trust me.'
Shane did. Implicitly.
Sure enough, the two followers had gained some speed, and although they were on the opposite side of the opening, behind rails and a twenty foot drop, their sudden increase in speed served to make Shane keep his mouth shut in future.
'What kind of films have you been watching?' Shane asked as they neared the corner.
'You know, the ones where
—
' but that was as far as he got as a big, mean sonofabitch by the name of Xander Foreman slammed into him, sending them both to the metal flooring. Xander was snapping and biting at Billy Toombs, but Billy was having none of it. Even though he hadn't been expecting the sudden arrival of one of the creatures, he was now fully capable of taking it out.
'
Billy
!' Shane called. He didn't know what to do, but hitting it around the face with his aluminium stick seemed to be all he could think of.
'I'm okay,' Billy said, not looking okay at all as the thing tried to take a bite out of his cheek. 'Just keep an eye on those other two.'
Shane turned; the
other
two were still coming, and would reach them within a minute if they weren't careful.