“You tell that son-of-a-bitch to get his ass down here, now!” Burl yelled.
Mitch heard that last comment loud and clear. Chase moved away from the door and let Mitch pass. Webber stayed behind.
Burl looked at Mitch. “Where the hell you been?”
“I was at the clinic with—”
“I know where you’ve been! Why the hell did you bring them there?”
“Warden, calm down. I was concerned with some of the inmates and—”
“And they’re all comatose and damn near dead. Parsons told me. What happened to them?” Burl had a ball of spit foam in the corner of the right side of his mouth.
“I’m not sure. What’d Parsons tell you?”
“He don’t know shit. He told me to call the Army for help. I’m looking for answers.”
“Why the hell would you think I know anything?” Anger crept into Mitch’s voice.
“Because the only inmates who have been affected were the ones working out in the fields. There has to be a connection. What made you bring those four particular inmates to the clinic? Is there some secret experiment I don’t know about? Are you working with the Army behind my back?” Burl’s cheeks splotched red while sweat popped out under his eyes.
“Hell, no. I was just worried that more might be sick because of what happened to Williams and this damn experiment going on. I took a look at the inmates when they came back from working the fields and thought that four of them were in bad shape. Two nearly died before I left Parsons’ office.”
“Well, they’re all near dead now.”
“What’d the Army say when you talked to them?”
“Said a Hummer was a minute away from the gate, and they would take the bodies back to the base for examination. Are you sure you aren’t in cahoots with them Army bastards?”
“Burl, how many years have we known each other? You know how reluctant I was to get involved in this scheme in the first place. I did it for you—and the others, mostly. Sure, the money helped out a bunch—more than I’d like to admit—but I wouldn’t have done this if no one else benefitted. I wouldn’t do anything behind your back.”
Burl’s shoulders slumped, and he looked like he just finished a five-mile hike. “Sorry. I’m just under a lot of stress. Get paranoid when I’m under stress.”
“Forget it,” Mitch said. “Any final word on Williams? He looked dead when he left, but you never know for sure. I guess miracles can happen.”
“They didn’t say. I suspect he’s dead. They don’t want to talk about it, because they don’t want to speculate if that vaccine is the cause or not.”
“What about Hart? I know he wasn’t there. Any idea when he might meet with us?”
“No idea at all. Went out for the day on ‘business.’ Probably snuck off to New Orleans and is tickling asses at the Hustler Club. Good for nothing son-of-a-bitch, prick, asshole . . .”
“What do we do? Move the inmates to bottled water? That shit’s in the well, and I don’t know how long it would take to flush it out.”
“That’s not a bad idea. I’ll get a few more Kentwood trucks ordered. We’ll have to ration what’s on hand until they arrive. Mitch, this is bad. Bad for Paradis, bad for me, bad for all of us.” Burl rested his head in his hands.
Mitch stepped over and put his hand on Burl’s shoulder.
“Mitch. The cafeteria. I just got a call for help,” Chase said.
“I hope it’s not what I think it is,” Mitch said.
“I never thought I’d pray for an altercation at Paradis, but I’d much rather two inmates shank it out over a pork chop than having any more succumb to the Army’s poison.”
“I know what you mean, Burl. I’ll go check it out and get back with you.”
Burl reached over and put his hand on Mitch’s shoulder. “Be careful.”
“You know it.” Mitch pointed toward the door. Webber and Chase led the way to the cafeteria.
It was organized chaos inside the eating area by the time the three reached the entrance. Some of the guards had lined up inmates who waited to be returned to their cells. Other inmates, at least 20 by Mitch’s estimate, lay on the floor. Their symptoms mimicked those who had collapsed earlier. Mitch did a quick scan at the faces and tried to remember if any had not been a member of the morning’s farm team. Without a doubt, there were. At least more than half. There was no connection with the mysterious illness and working the fields at Paradis.
Parsons, Richards, and two other medical aids went through the motions of checking for vitals. A couple of guards manned stretchers and were in the process of hauling the victims out. The clinic’s main room wouldn’t hold the current amount of sick now. Mitch doubted if the Army was capable of hauling more than the four inmates they were already coming for. They would have to return or call for help, but even then, there was no way the military facility could handle the large amount of casualties. The word would have to go out for outside intervention—soon. Burl was almost down to his last card. He would have no choice but to play it.
Mitch bounded by Parsons’ side. “There are so many. Where are you going to put them?”
“I don’t—the gym. I guess we need to get them to the gym.”
Mitch had never seen grown men like these—hardened criminals—act so scared over anything. Childlike panic swept over those unaffected. The inmates acted like an unseen monster was on the prowl to attack. There was no place to run.
Chapter 5
What Could Go Wrong?
The rumble of the diesel engine lulled Hart’s mind off the road and returned it to Mason’s cold stare from the meeting. Only one other man had looked at him that way before, and it was a sight forever burned into his mind.
He had been on a mission twelve years ago in some shit-hole town in Iraq—a town whose name he could not remember, and even if he did, he couldn’t pronounce it anyway. Hart’s squad was caught in an ambush. Bullets rained from above, cutting him off. He took cover behind the nearest wall. As he returned fire in the general direction of the snipers, a male teen, no more than five feet tall, snuck up and smashed him in the back of the head with a piece of pottery. Hart had been rendered senseless for a moment, dropping his rifle to the ground. The pottery was thin and didn’t cause any real damage, but the blindside attack had shocked him.
The enemy fell on him and pounded his back with fists.
After a few seconds, Hart snapped from his daze. A quick backhand sent the monkey on his back to the ground. Hart jumped to his feet and was surprised, and a little embarrassed that a kid had gotten the better of him.
He towered over the attacker who immediately returned to his feet, ready to finish the fight. The foe cried out in primordial rage, and ran at Hart with fists raised.
Hart grabbed the boy by the neck with both hands and shoved him against a wall—no fear shown in the adversary’s eyes as his feet hovered above the ground. The boy stared at Hart, and that stare reflected generations of pain and suffering. It was filled with the hatred and contempt that only the self-righteous could project.
The tighter Hart gripped, the more seething anger poured from the boy’s eyes. This anger was ancient, as timeless as the sands of the Syrian Desert. Hate was, indeed, born into some people.
Hart squeezed tighter and watched the youthful face turn a dark red that shifted to purple. He kept waiting for the teen to surrender. He wanted him to break. He wanted to see that unbound hatred melt into fear.
The boy dug his fingers in Hart’s arm, an ineffective struggle to free himself. Hart refused to shift his attention to the slow trickle of blood that flowed from his skin and clumped on the sand below.
The enemy’s resistance waned, and shortly, his grip loosened. His arms fell still to the side, but his eyes never lost that fire. Even in death, the hate still radiated through them.
It was the exact way Mason had looked at him when they met in the mayor’s office. It left Hart with an unbridled fear that distracted him and chipped away at his self-confidence.
Hart slowed the truck as he entered the perimeter of the base, waiting for the guard to lift the gate. It had been a long day, and it was getting late. The muscles in his back had knotted up.
Nothing that a good cigar and a half pint of scotch couldn’t cure.
He parked in front of his trailer and stepped out the truck. He was halfway to the steps when he heard his name called.
“Colonel Hart! I have some important news.” Lieutenant Cayton Reid sprinted toward Hart, waving a hand in the air.
Hart stopped and slowly turned his head, offering a single raised eyebrow.
“You’ve got to come to the lab. You’ve got to see this.” Reid trotted to a halt. His chest rose and fell with each rapid breath.
“The lab? This time of night? You got a poker game and some strippers in there, or something?” Hart massaged the small of his back with both hands. The knot started to feel a little better.
“This is serious, Colonel. A lot has happened while you were gone today. We tried to call, you didn’t answer.”
Hart pulled out his phone and looked at it. “Dead. I guess I forgot to charge it. What could have possibly happened in 24 hours?”
Reid beckoned Hart with a hand gesture. “Walk with me. I’ll fill you in along the way.”
Hart frowned and stomped off after him like a five-year-old told to go to bed on Christmas Eve.
Reid leaned into Hart as they moved along. “It started with one prisoner dropping dead in the gardens at Paradis. It appeared to be heat stroke, but we sent our men out to retrieve the body anyway. By noon, four more prisoners had passed out and remained unconscious. We didn’t believe it had anything to do with us, blaming it on the E. coli outbreak. On the side of caution, we shipped them over here for the medical team to give them a treatment.” He paused for an unusual amount of time.
“And?” Hart said.
“The prisoners all died, sir.”
Hart stopped and jerked Reid by the arm. “Dead?”
“Hold on. The story doesn’t end there.” Reid nodded toward one of the Quonset huts set up to house the patient testing. “You’ve got questions, sir, and I think they can be better attended to by Doc Gottlieb.”
Hart went to ask another question and thought it best to take Reid’s advice. The two continued to the door, where a soldier lowered his MP-4, granting them access into the lab.
“What the hell?” Hart stepped inside the brightly lit lab and saw a room filled with activity. The computers were powered up. Technicians hunkered over monitors, pointing and engaging in deep discussion.
Five prisoners, wearing bright orange jumpsuits, stood at attention in the middle of the room. Each had an electronic netting cap on the top of their skulls. As if controlled by one mind, all five raised their right arms straight out from their sides with the timing and precision of Disney World automatons.
Their right arms snapped back down. Then the left arms sprang up and hung in the air.
Hart thought the men looked hypnotized. They showed no emotion and stared out with an icy gaze, nothing behind the eyes.
“I don’t understand. You told me the prisoners died.”
“They did.” Doctor Gottlieb stepped next to Hart, a smile frozen on his face. “Six hours ago, all five prisoners died in the examination room. Well, four, technically, as one was DOA. I’m not sure how, but shortly afterward, they awoke and put up quite a ruckus.”
“You must have been mistaken. They couldn’t have died. They’re alive now.”
“No, they’re still dead.”
“Gottlieb, you’re starting to piss me off with this nonsense.”
“It’s not nonsense, and it’s not magic. It’s science, but it will take some time to understand what is animating these corpses.”
“Do you know what killed them to begin with?” Hart asked.
“We don’t know. We assumed E. coli, but none of them carried the bacteria. We suspect they had a reaction to the vaccine we placed in the water system.”
“How could the vaccine have killed them to begin with? If we’re using it, it’s safe, right? Isn’t it supposed to
prevent
people from dying?”
“Programs like these always carry certain unknown risks. We were successfully able to immunize chimpanzees in the testing. This was the first time we treated humans. Death, as a side effect, was determined to be at such a low percentage that it wasn’t even worth considering.”
“So what the fuck are you going to do to fix it?”
Gottlieb shot a scowl at Hart. “I don’t know! I have to do more research.”
The left arms of the prisoners slapped back to their sides in unison.
“So far, the only thing these guys look fit to do is move on command, like a robot. I bet they would make one fine synchronized swimming team. That’s not going to do us any good in real-time battle.” Hart chuckled.
“Hart, stop parading your ignorance. You do your job, and I’ll do mine.” Gottlieb shifted his body. “Run subroutine five,” he called out to one of the technicians, who pecked out a series of commands on his keyboard.
Each inmate began jogging, double-time, in place. The two on the inside of the line turned opposite, and the men performed a series of rapid high and low hand slaps, rotating between one another. During the display, a basketball tossed by a technician bounced to the group. Each inmate fought for possession.
Once a winner came away with a ball, an immediate game of keep-away ensued. Their movements were fluid, but still a bit robotic in execution.
Gottlieb turned to Hart. “What you are witnessing are the subjects using their own cognitive reasoning to achieve the direction of an order. These men may be hardened criminals with limited education, but they possess a computer created by nature vastly superior to anything man can make. With the Neural Net, we are able to send commands directly to their brains. Imagine an army of intelligent drones, able to receive real-time directives, and use their own reasoning and survival instincts to meet any challenge. This army will not act as robots waiting to be told each move to make. The army will be the perfect hybrid—a thinking machine.”
“But they’re dead,” Hart said.
“The fact that the army is dead before going to battle only makes this project more successful. And if soldiers die in battle, we can bring them back to continue the fight.”
Hart dropped his gaze to the floor and shook his head. “You son-of-a-bitch.” He stepped forward and nearly touched noses with Gottlieb. “Sounds to me like you’ve struck a goldmine. Don’t fuck it up. My promotion depends on this project.”
Before Gottlieb could respond, the door to the lab burst open.
“Colonel Hart! Colonel Hart! We just got an emergency call from Paradis. There’s been a riot, and the prisoners are escaping.”
Hart grabbed Reid by the elbow. “Get on the radio and execute Code Silence. I don’t want anyone coming or going out of this shit-hole town. I don’t want any calls going in or out, either.”
Reid saluted at attention and yelled a firm, “Yes, sir,” before he turned and hurried out of the lab.
“Shut these guys down and stick them in a room some place. We’ve got other fish to fry right now.”
* * *
Earlier at Paradis
“We’ve just moved ten more into the gym. For God’s sake, Warden, call the Department of Health and tell them what’s going on.” Mitch stood in front of Burl, begging. The warden sat hunchbacked in his chair, safely behind his desk.
“I can’t do that. I’ve got to get a hold of Hart first. I’m up to my ass in gators. I need him to step in and contact the governor.”
“Will you at least call someone at the base and have their medical staff haul some of them away for treatment?”
“No.” Burl smeared a perspiration moustache with the back of his hand. The situation was bad. Eighty inmates were either dead or on the verge of dying. He had been trying to get Hart on his cell phone for the last several hours.
There’s nothing to worry about, Burl
, Hart had said before handing him fifty thousand in cash.
Here’s my personal cell number
. “Hart needs to get over here right now and own this damn mess!”
“The way I see it, the only chance of saving your skin is to go public now. Get the news at WWL on the phone and lay out the truth. I know that’s going to be a tough thing to do, but it doesn’t matter at this point. You’re going to have to man up and face this problem head on. Win the war of public opinion. Get the people of the state on your side. You need to make the first strike and ensure the safety of this prison!”
Burl looked down at the desk and shook his head. “Mitch, you’re a good man. A man of honor. This is politics. Honor is rarely in the equation. Politics is not like the military. We don’t operate under a moral code like the Rangers’ Creed you swore to back in the day. We do whatever it takes to win. At any cost. It all depends on what cards you have in your hand and how you play them. The television stations, newspapers, all of the media in this state are in cahoots with the governor and his administration. I had a chance to let the public in on this but chose not to. Now that it’s failed, there is really no point in telling them. I’ve got a pair of deuces in my hand, and the governor has all the trump cards. I don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell to get my side out first.” Burl picked up his cell phone and hit redial. “Answer, you sorry sack of shit! Answer!”
* * *
“We’ve got another one for the collection.” Tim Stones had lived all his life in Botte. He had been working as a Paradis guard for less than six months. He led the stretcher, carrying one of the thinner inmates, with a guard having ten years of service under his belt maneuvering the rear.
Doctor Parsons shot a weary glance toward the new arrival. “Find an empty spot on the floor and set him down. He makes an even one hundred.”
“Gosh, Doc. Is this the E. coli, or does it have something to do with the water?” Tim asked.
Parsons turned abruptly, put his hand on Tim’s shoulder, and said, “What did you mean by that last remark?”
Tim stopped in his tracks. “Uh . . . You know, the reason that they hauled all that bottled water in and told us not to drink from the faucet. Warden Burl said they were treating the water with a chemical to help prevent the E. coli. Is that what’s killing the inmates?”
Parsons pointed an index finger. “I don’t know what you or your buddies have been gossiping about, but if you value your job, you need to keep unfounded rumors to yourself. This is a very serious matter. We can’t have you upsetting members of the community without evidence to back it up. Keep your lips sealed until tests can be run and the facts come out.”