Authors: Adam Millard
'Clay, on your feet,' Charles said, his hand now firmly holding the handle of his pistol. Under current circumstances, Charles Dean didn't think he would hesitate, not for one second, to use the gun. Cyrus Clay just growled again, which pissed the governor off. 'I said, get the fuck up!'
Cyrus Clay's head snapped around; his teeth were dripping with a thick, black substance which looked to Charles Dean like tar. He remained hunched over, but he now resembled an owl, with his head turned almost entirely around. His eyes were bleeding with the same black ooze that trickled out of his mouth; Charles looked into those eyes for a few seconds before looking away. The darkness was almost too much to take, and staring into the void for too long might drive a man crazy.
'What the fuck, Clay?' Charles managed. He hadn't noticed but he had instinctively drawn his pistol and had his finger on the trigger, ready.
Cyrus grunted, stood, and turned to face the governor. His arm, Charles noticed, was missing quite a lot of flesh, which would explain the mess around the prisoner's lips.
He had been eating his
own
arm.
Charles couldn't believe what he was seeing, but he
had
to, didn't he? His own eyes didn't lie. He was staring at a man who had, up until a few moments ago, been ripping into his own flesh. Had Cyrus finally gone over the edge? Was he really
insane
? Charles hoped not; he didn't relish the thought of all the paperwork that came with transferring a prisoner to a secure hospital.
'Don't move another
—' Charles began, but it was
too late. Clay was already running towards the bars, his arms stretched out, his teeth bared. He certainly looked
like a mental patient.
When he hit the bars, his nose broke instantly. There was a squelch, and blood shot out of Clay's face; some of the black gunk that had filled his mouth hit the floor with the sound of treacle landing on a counter-top. His eyes suggested surprise as he bounced off the bars, but that didn't prevent him from giving it another try. He shot forward, clattered the bars again, all the time growling and moaning. His head split on the left side, which should have hurt – even a mental person – but if it did, then Clay didn't show it.
'Back up!' Charles called, but it made no difference. Clay kept on coming, and seemed to hit the bars with more force every time. In the end, the governor decided that he would deal with the disturbed prisoner later on.
He had to get up to the third floor.
'Don't leave us down here with him,' a prisoner called out as Charles Dean disappeared around the corner.
'Shut up,' the governor replied as he ran up the flight of stairs to the third floor.
*
'What, so you had to hit him so much that his brain came out?' Jenson asked Michaelson. 'That's pretty fucked up, man?'
And it was. In all of his years as a prison guard, Michaelson had never seen anything like it.
'He just kept on
coming
,' Michaelson said. 'I had no choice. You seen what he's done to Hart?'
Jenson glanced into the cell. He could see Dennis Hart's feet, which were twitching over the edge of the bed, but that was all. The blood that had sprayed all over the walls and floor confirmed it for Officer Jenson: he didn't want to see the wound on Hart's neck.
'What the fuck is going on up here?' Charles Dean asked as he huffed and puffed his way along the row. 'Will somebody turn that goddamned alarm off before I go fucking deaf?'
One of the other guards, a short fat man by the name of Reynolds, saluted the governor before running off down the
stairs. Reynolds was keen, but a little
too
keen sometimes, and as he disappeared in search of the alarm controls, Charles Dean tried to remember the poor guys name, and couldn't.
'What happened to Kelly?' Charles asked. The body had been flipped over; Jimmy Kelly's one eye was hanging down the side of his face.
'I had to,' Michaelson said. 'He was trying to get to me, Sir. I think he wanted to bite me.'
'I don't care if he wanted to
fuck
you, Michaelson. You do not kill prisoners with excessive force.'
'Like I said, Gov, I had no choice. I hit him, and he kept in getting up and coming at me. He'd already ripped a chunk out of Hart.'
Charles Dean smiled; at least something good had come out of it. 'Where is he?'
'On his bunk,' Jenson said. 'But judging by the mess in there, I don't think he's going to make it, Gov.'
Charles glared into the cell, expecting to see
Dennis Hart lying on his bed, dying a slow and painful death. When he saw the man running towards him, with
no cage between them to prevent it, he said, 'Holy shit!'
As Hart hit the governor, they both went backwards, toppled over the railings, and fell three floors down.
*
Marla didn't know what to do. She would have been bored were it not for the unique collection of music to browse on the shelves in Charles Dean's office. There were jazz records, classical, blues. She even found a signed, first-edition copy of Michael Jackson's Thriller, which was out of place amongst the rest of the collection.
The office, she surmised, was a sign of the governor's unparalleled machismo. There were certificates announcing Charles Dean's adeptness down at the gun-club; there were trophies scattered haphazardly around the room with little men sitting atop them, playing golf. Marla located the drinks cabinet, which was cleverly concealed within a gilt-coated globe of the world. She poured herself a small whisky and sighed.
'Will somebody turn off that godforsaken alarm,' she said, sipping her drink and reading through some notes on the governor's desk which meant absolutely nothing to her.
In a silver frame on the desk, there was a photograph of Charles with two young girls; it was the typical daddy-daughter picture, with smiles all round and love glinting in everyone's eyes. She wondered if his girls were aware of their father's brutality, or whether they had even been on the receiving end of it whilst growing up.
It wouldn't surprise her.
A few more minutes passed; Marla refilled her glass
knowing that she could finish the entire bottle and it would make no difference, although she did have to drive home, and the last thing she needed after the day she had had was to get pulled by the police. Tomorrow, she would
be on the lookout for a new job, something
different
, hopefully something that she would be appreciated for. She could always try and get back into Russell's, which was the hospital that she had worked at before resuming her post at the prison. It wasn't a bad
hospital to work at, and she had gotten along quite well with her colleagues. If they would take her back, then it might be something to consider.
The alarm continued to annoy her as she worked her way through the second glass of whisky.
*
'The fall would have killed them!' Jenson cried. 'It makes no sense!'
They peered over the railings at the two men on the ground floor. Dennis Hart was growling and ripping through Charles Dean's stomach; intestines were being pulled out, and Hart proceeded to bite at them, yanking them apart with his teeth.
'We need to get to somewhere safe,' Michaelson said. 'I've seen some crazy shit in my time, but this is something else.'
He knew what he meant when he said somewhere safe; the armoury, where all of the guns were at.
Dennis Hart continued to gnaw through the fresh cadaver before him. The alarm continued to sound in its shrill pitch. Everything continued to get gradually worse.
*
The cards went into the middle of the table. Rooster was not happy as he had lost three games on the trot. Marvin Manson, on the other hand, couldn't believe his luck. So far he had won twenty cigarettes – and none of those shitty menthol things that Rooster smoked – and twenty-three dollars in cash, which could get you quite a lot of stuff if you knew where to go for it. The constant alarm didn't seem to be putting him off his stride at all.
'Your deal,' Marvin said, pushing the cards across the table to his cellmate.
Rooster picked up the cards and began to shuffle. 'If I was a betting man,' he said while he began to handle the cards expertly. 'I'd say that Dennis is the reason why that alarm's still ringing.'
'You think?'
'Who else is up on third that might cause such a nuisance?'
Marvin nodded in agreement. 'But he wouldn't
be trying to escape,' he said. 'He knows better than that.'
'He might be welcoming one of the fishes a little too roughly,' Rooster sniggered. 'You know what he gets like when he's pissed off.'
Rooster began to deal the cards, counting silently in his head as he did so.
'What are the stakes this game?' Marvin asked, feeling lucky.
'I'm all out of cash,' Rooster said, placing the rest of the deck in the middle of the table. 'How about if I win, I get a go on your mother when I get out of here, and if you win, you get to fuck my sister?'
Marvin laughed. 'Have you seen the state of my mother?' he said.
'Yeah, but you haven't seen the fucking state of my sister,' Rooster cackled. 'Even I wouldn't fuck her.'
'In that case, you're on,' Marvin laughed.
They played the hand; Rooster lost, and Marvin began to make plans to pay his friend's sister a visit upon release.
*
Reynolds ran to the end of the block, and when he got there he couldn't breathe. He reached into his pocket, pulled out an inhaler, and sucked it, pressing the button several times before giving it a shake and trying again. His asthma had never been a problem at work before; then again, he had never moved so sharply at work before, and he felt like he had no choice but to move as quickly as possible.
He pocketed the inhaler and entered the gate which led to the control panel. He could hear the prisoners starting to get increasingly frustrated by the din of the alarm, which was not a good thing, so the quicker he worked, the better.
He looked for something on the walls, but when you didn't know quite what you were looking for, then it was harder than it looked. There were a few levers and switches, all of which looked electrical, but most of them were labelled with coloured stickers: one said
Main Lights,
another said
Yard
. The next one didn't have a
coloured sticker on, but a sign hung around the handle that said
Do Not Touch.
Officer Reynolds decided that it
was the kind of instruction that the alarm would have
written on it, so gave it a quick tug. When nothing happened, at least nothing that was instantly noticeable, he moved along the wall.
Eventually, he found the override box – it had
Manual Alarm Override
printed on it in big yellow letters - pulled open the little door on the front of it, and inserted the key. It was a key that all of the guards were issued with, but one that he had never used before. He turned the key, and immediately the alarm ceased its incessant racket. The prisoners were even louder for a few seconds, and then quietened down, happy that they could finally
get some sleep.
'Yessss,' Officer Reynolds smiled. He would be commended for his quick work, and would be noticed by Charles Dean as one of the better guards under his command, which wasn't hard. All you had to do was take a good hard look at
Michaelson, Jenson, Tyler, and a few of the others. You soon realised that they were
corrupt. It was only a matter of time before the governor figured out that Reynolds was, in fact, the best of a bad
bunch.
He closed the override box and headed back up to the third floor, where he hoped he would be the recipient of a pat on the back by his boss.
*
Shane was about to ask Billy Toombs what he found so funny about
Kurt Vonnegut
when the click came. It was a sound that he, and all of the other inmates, were very familiar with. But why now? Why had the gates been unlocked now, at
night
?
'Check it,' Billy said, pointing to the barred gate at the front of the cell. 'Must be some sort of mechanical failure.'
Shane stepped up to the gate and gave it a pull. When it slid across and slammed against the stopper on the other side of the cell he couldn't quite believe it.
'Shhhhh,' Billy urged. He could see that Shane was about to lose it, probably shout out to all and sundry that the cells were open. Billy reminded him just in time
that such an action was probably not a good idea. The alarm had maybe drowned out the mechanical click for
most of the prisoners, and the ones who had heard it
might not cotton on what it actually was.
Then, the alarm stopped. The ringing continued, though, inside Shane's own ears; he wondered how long that would last for.