Shadows Burned In (4 page)

“
Thank ye, Jesus
,” said Stu, sweat popping out on his
forehead.

“I gotta go,” said Kitts, as if it weren’t open for debate.

“Can’t do that, Kitts,” said Thompson. “It’s against regs.
You ain’t sick.”

A look of utter defeat spread across Kitts’s face. He kept
thinking to himself,
Your wife is about to have a baby and they just told
you you can’t go with her to the hospital
, trying to create the right
emotion. “Aw, come on, Wes, he’s my . . . he’s my
friend
, and this looks
serious. I ain’t never seen him like this before, not even with the arthritis.
You got to let me go down with him!”

“Kitts, I—”

“
Oh
, please,” cried Kitts, getting down on the floor
and mewling as he grabbed Thompson’s pant leg.

“
Ohhhhhh, sweet lord, let’s gooooooo, I need a doctor
bad!
”

Jesus
, thought Thompson,
I hate to see a grown man
cry. Even a fag
.

“All right, all right, let’s just go!”

Other prisoners down the block were starting to make fun of
faggy Stu’s moaning and crying ’cause Kitty-cat must’ve gone in too deep this
time.

“I don’t know, Doc,” said Kitts, concern written all over
him. “He just doubled over and started screamin.”

“That’s right,” confirmed Thompson. Even though he hadn’t
been there when the pain had started, he felt the need to show he was in charge
of the situation. “Just doubled over.”

“All right, we’ll see what’s going on,” said the groggy
doctor. “Unzip your uniform.”

“Wahh?” Stu’s agonized demeanor faltered a bit. “What’d you
say?”

“
I said take off your
uniform
,” repeated the
doctor wearily. It was obvious he begrudged wasting good sleeping time
repeating the instruction.

“Umm.” Stu looked over at Kitts, who gave him the slightest
nod of his forehead. “Umm. Okay.”

He reached up to unzip the prison uniform, while at the same
time Kitts got Thompson’s attention. “I really appreciate you lettin me come
along, Wes. Nobody else woulda done it.”

As Stu started to unzip, Thompson turned to look at Kitts.
He didn’t know whether to pity the old queen or lead a lynching party and be
rid of him. “Kitts, you—”

“What the . . .” The doctor leaned over Stu to get a better
look.

Thompson turned away from Kitts. “What’s—”

But Thompson never finished his question. Kitts whacked him
over the head with a bedpan. The doctor, who’d been focused on Stu, watched with
disbelief as the guard crumpled. Stu came off the table and jumped on the
doctor’s back. The two pirouetted once, twice. While Stu and the doctor did
their dance, Kitts took the baton off Thompson’s belt and beat the back of the
guard’s skull till he heard it crack. Finally, the doctor collapsed as Stu
vice-gripped his larynx.

Then all was perfectly quiet.

Kitts cocked an ear and listened. No one was coming. Stu had
done a good job of choking the doctor into silence, and Thompson hadn’t gotten
off so much as a shout. “All right,” he said, no time to waste. “Good-bye
prisoner, hello Mr. Goodwrench.”

He and Stu stripped off their prison whites to reveal the
dyed bluish-black overalls beneath. From a distance, and even close-up to the
unobservant, they were just two old mechanics more at ease working on cars
before all the electronic, satellite-linked gizmos were introduced into them.

Kitts fumbled around on the dead guard’s belt, found the switcher,
and passed it over the back of his neck. He didn’t hear anything like a
reassuring click, so he wasn’t sure if the thing was off or not. Knowing he’d
gone too far to stop now, he riffled through one of the drawers in the medical
cabinet until he found a small scalpel.

“What you gonna do?” asked Stu.

Kitts ignored him, touching the tip of the blade gingerly on
his finger. It was sharp, all right. Rubbing his thumb over the slightly raised
area on the back of his neck, he guided the scalpel until it rested over the
tattler.

“Kitts! What you—”

“Shaddup!”

Here it was. Everything on Red 36. Let it ride, Gambler Man.

He pressed down and began to scrape with the scalpel. He
knew the tattler was only a little deeper than a splinter might’ve been. Kitts flinched
as he cut. The blade finally scraped metal. He pulled aside one tiny flap of
skin and knew the air was getting to it now.

(how fast does the temperature drop once the air hits the
inside of the body)

He suddenly remembered he wasn’t sure if he’d disarmed the
tattler. Hurriedly, Kitts scraped aside a flap of skin on the other side and
pushed the scalpel in deeper to pry out the device. The pain became intense, and
he felt the tattler give as he pried it out. He looked at it for a moment, then
the time clock in his head began to scream at him.

Only one way to make sure
.

He plunged the scalpel into Thompson’s throat and opened a
thin slit of a hole, then forced the tattler in. Closing up the wound, he
counted down the seconds until he was sure it wouldn’t go off.

“Y’know, you coulda just put it in his mouth,” said Stu.

Kitts turned to him. “Now you.”

After removing Stu’s tattler and forcing it down the
unconscious doctor’s throat, Kitts took a deep breath. As far as the main
switchboard knew, both he and Stu were in the infirmary. And until the doctor
woke up, that’s all they’d know.

“Oh, that reminds me,” said Kitts. “Excuse me,” he said
politely, pushing his way past Stu. Bending over the doctor, he put aside the
scalpel and picked up Thompson’s baton, then systematically bashed in the
doctor’s skull with repeated, measured, strained strokes.

“There now. That’s better.”

Stu looked on, his jaw dropping. “What’d you do that fer?”
he asked. “Doc ain’t never done us no wrong.”

Kitts looked at him. “And now he never will, neither,” he
said. “It’s too late to half-ass this, Stu. We’re all in.”

“Uhhh—”

“Be quiet and listen to me,” said Kitts, brandishing the
baton so Stu would pay attention. “We’re goin out, and right now. One more
thing . . .” Kitts unzipped his faux Mr. Goodwrench uniform and removed folded
cardboard. Stu watched as Kitts opened up the little boxy one- and two-foot
tubes held together with duct tape. Kitts slipped them on his extremities, then
brought out one last untaped portion, which he wrapped around his torso like a
girdle. “Stu, I need your help here,” he said.

“What you doin?” asked Stu in wonder.

“Just do what I asked you and come over here and help me.”
Stu moved toward him, staring at the cardboard on Kitts’s body. “Take this,”
said Kitts, handing him the role of duct tape, “and tape me up.”

“Huh?”

“
Like a package, you
. . .” Kitts stopped, took a
deep breath. “Like a
package
, Stu. Just like a package. Wrap the
cardboard around my body with a few pieces of tape. Simple as that.”

Stu still looked confused. “But what’s it
for
?”

“It’s for gettin over the razor wire in the fence. It’ll
help protect me from that.”

Stu nodded, tearing a strip of tape off and starting to wrap
it around Kitts. Then he stopped, his face dawning like it was the first time
anyone had ever switched on the light bulb in a dusty attic. “But I ain’t got
none!”

Kitts winked. “You won’t need it, buddy. Trust me. Once I go
over, the wire will be flattened underneath me. I’ll lie on the fence, then you
crawl over me. I could only steal enough cardboard for one set without gettin
caught. I lie over the fence, let the razor dig into the cardboard, you just
up-and-over me, and we’re out!”

Stu thought about that a minute. “Oh, I see.” Then Stu
thought another step, and Kitts almost fell over at the look of gratitude
coming over the smaller man’s face. “You’d let me crawl over you, boss, while
you hang on dat fence, wid dem lights and guns maybe poppin off an—”

“Don’t worry about that. If we’re careful, there won’t be no
guns poppin off. Trust me, Stu.”

Stu thought about it another minute. “Yeah, okay. We
friends, right? We been plannin this together for near-on thirty
years
.”

Kitts smiled. “That’s right, Stu. Now, tape me up afore they
wonder why the infirmary light’s on.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Stu, running the tape around a man he
considered to be the greatest criminal mastermind since Al Capone. Meanwhile,
Kitts applied shoe polish to his face and hands, then handed the polish to Stu
to do the same.

“All right, buddy, this is it,” Kitts said in his best
pep-talk voice. “All those years of planning are about to pay off in spades.”

Stu nodded. “I’m wit ya, boss.”

“Let’s go, then.”

They inched out into the main yard from the infirmary. No
one around except the tower guards that manned the spotlights and machine guns,
and only two of them to worry about. The spotlights scanned the grounds
regularly, like clockwork in fact, and Kitts caught their rhythm.

“
Now
,” he said in a low voice, and they shuffle-ran,
bent over as much as their old backs would allow. The spotlights raked the
concrete of the basketball courts. Stu nearly yelped as one touched his back
leg, but he held his tongue. Kitts hunched down at the base of a basketball
goal, pulling Stu, who was huffing and puffing already, down with him. They
were in a blind spot from which they could reconnoiter the rest of the ground.

There was no alarm.

All was quiet.

“Okay, Stu. Fifty feet to the hurricane fence, up and over
that and the razor wire, then over the outer fence, and we’re home free.”

Catching his breath, Stu said, “You want I should go first?”

Kitts rolled his eyes out of Stu’s sight.
Jesus, you
fucking retard
. . .

“No, Stu, I have to go first.” He patted the cardboard
armor. “The razor wire, remember?”

Stu rolled his own eyes at his own stupidity. “Oh yeah,
boss. Sorreh.”

“Don’t sweat it. Ready? Here we go. Now remember . . . I
have to lead the way. Understand? You don’t go first. I have to lead the way.”

“Yeah, boss, I don forget dis time.”

Kitts nodded, feeling absolutely no confidence in that, and
gauged the lights. One – two – three.

“
Now
.”

Kitts led the way and Stu let him. Before they knew it, they
were through the sweeping minefield of spotlights and at the hurricane fence.
Kitts looked up. It looked like the Empire State Building to him, it was so
high. But he’d have to climb it.

“Okay, Stu, help me up. Help me get a foothold.”

“Yeah, boss,” said the other, cupping his hands and firming
his back, worried that Kitts’s weight might cut his own escape plans short. But
Kitts quickly caught his arthritic fingers in the chain links of the hurricane
fence.
Thank God they ain’t electrified anymore
, he thought. The system
had come to trust the tattlers and a series of crisscrossing electronic
eyebeams between the first and second fences to hold the prisoners in.

Kitts reached the top and carefully lay across the slimmest,
skinniest, dullest portion of the wire he could find. They had forty-five
seconds to be down the other side of the fence before the lights passed this
way again. “Now, Stu!” he yelled quietly down. “Hurry, buddy!”

Stu started up the fence. His own arthritis was more
progressed than Kitts’s and made it hard as hell to keep a grip without
screaming out loud. The bone-grating stiffness shot up his arms and into his heart,
which beat faster than it had in years. But thoughts of failure, of failing
Kitts
,
spurred him on, and then he was straddling Kitts’s back, ready to go over.

“Go
on
,” gasped Kitts under Stu’s weight. “Twenty
seconds to the lights!”

Stu did his best to hurry over his friend lying beneath him
across the wire, cursing with Stu’s every movement. Before he realized it, Stu
was slung over the other side, his hands screeching their agony at him as he
got his toeholds on the other side of the hurricane fence. Kitts was already
struggling to release himself from the razor wire, which had dug its claws into
the cardboard armor around his torso.

Shit!

Time ticked by as Kitts struggled to pull himself off the
razored talons. He figured he had less than ten seconds before the lights hit
him. Stu hit the ground on the other side. Kitts wondered if his brilliant plan
was going to work, if Ramirez might not have the last laugh after all.
That
old faggot died humped over, just like he lived
, he heard Ramirez cackling
to the guards over a beer.
Fitting end, don’t you think, boys? So to speak,
that is, haw-haw-haw
.

Five seconds.

Kitts decided to hell with it, he had no choice, and tried
to swing his legs up and over his head like a gymnast, hoping his weight and
the momentum would tumble him off the wire and down the other side. And if he
was lucky, he’d catch himself on the fence, and if he weren’t . . .