In The Falling Light (40 page)

Mendez did not respond to the repeated radio
calls from either Dykestrom or Frye.

The two men quickly geared up. “Send the SRT
to DV-4,” said Dykestrom, “I’ll get the rest of them moving. Then
go find Mendez.”

Dean quickly assembled the Special Response
Team in the hallway, giving instructions to the senior man before
they ran off as a unit. Then he headed down another corridor,
gripping his shotgun in one hand and his flashlight in the other,
its white beam leading the way. He had a good idea where she was
going.

Officers Pico and Moore were buttoned up in
the bubble at DV-8, listening to the chatter on their radios,
broken by frequent bursts of static, glancing occasionally at the
ceiling. It sounded like the storm would peel back the roof at any
moment. Beyond the armored glass, the Monster House was still, all
the inmates locked safely away in their individual cells, a single
box of emergency lights high on a wall casting long shadows across
the common area.

Banging at the glass to their backs made
them jump, and they turned to see Sgt. Mendez in the hallway
beyond, holding a mag-lite. For a moment they were confused,
because the SRT sergeant wasn’t wearing her riot gear as they would
have expected. She wasn’t even wearing her baseball cap, and her
wet hair hung loose about her face and shoulders. She was armed,
though, and carrying equipment bags.

She rapped the mag-lite against the glass.
“Open up.”

They did, using the manual lever to unlock
the power-driven door, pulling it open on its tracks. She moved
inside and dropped her bags.

“Both of you report to the arsenal and Sgt.
Frye. I’ll man the PC until I’m relieved.” She handed them her
flashlight.

They glanced at each other. Shouldn’t she be
leading an SRT squad somewhere? Pico looked at her. “Sergeant, you
know we always need two in the bubble, no matter what.”

Carla glared at the younger man. “Get your
asses to the arsenal,
now.”

“Yes, Sergeant!” They ran from the bubble
and down the hall.

Carla pulled the door shut and watched the
bouncing light disappear into the darkness. Once it was gone, she
picked up her bags and went through the interior door, into the
common area of the housing unit, pulling that door shut behind her
as well. She crouched and unzipped the bag which had rested in her
desk for so long, removing a pair of steel wedges and a hand-held
sledge. She placed the wedge under the door to the bubble and
slammed it home with repeated hits of the sledge. The
PING,
PING, PING
of metal on metal reverberated off the concrete
walls. Then she moved to the door to the airlock passage and did
the same,
PING, PING, PING.

The storm had already awakened half the men
in the Monster House. Carla’s hammering woke the rest, and faces
appeared at small windows.

Carla tossed the sledge back at the sports
bag, then slung the other bag over a shoulder as she raced across
the room, weaving in and out of the tables, going straight to
Kelvin Finch’s cell. He was at the door, staring out at her through
the glass, his face puffy with sleep. She opened his food slot at
crouched in front of it.

“Wake up, Finch. You don’t want to miss
this.”

Before he could reply, she was moving from
cell to cell, unlocking the individual food slots and leaving them
open, ignoring the questions from the men inside. A minute later
her combat boots thudded up the metal stairs to the second tier,
where she moved down the row doing the same to all fourteen
cells.

“Finch, can you hear me?” she shouted, her
voice echoing through the big room. She unslung the evil-looking,
black Mossberg combat shotgun and pumped a round into the chamber.
“Her name was Anita Rodriguez. She was seven years old.”

“What’s going on, Sergeant?” asked the man
on the other side of the door.
Parker Dunn; molested a
five-year-old boy in the men’s room of a Chucky Cheese, and when he
cried out, strangled him.
Carla shoved the barrel of the
Mossberg through the slot and into Dunn’s soft belly, pulling the
trigger. It nearly cut him in half.

The weapon’s blast sounded like a bomb going
off, and as one the men in the Monster House started yelling. Carla
moved to the next cell.
Eldon Whitley; serial child rapist who
used a hammer to forever silence his victims.
He was kneeling
in front of his food slot, trying to see what was going on. Fatal
curiosity. He saw the looming muzzle of the Mossberg inches from
his face a second before it went off.

“She was my little girl, Finch,” she yelled.
“My baby.”

Tyrone Lawrence; tied his girlfriend to a
kitchen chair and forced her to watch as he sodomized her
nine-year-old daughter before killing her with a kitchen knife.
Tyrone had pulled his mattress off his bunk and was holding it
against the inside of the door, blocking the food slot. The
Mossberg roared, shredding the mattress and blowing Tyrone’s spine
out through his back.

The inmates were screaming, calling for
help, hurling obscenities and mindless questions.

“Are you listening, Finch?” Carla
shouted.

Leon Smith; raped and murdered his two
stepsons then set the house on fire with his wife inside.
He
tried to hide back under his bunk. The Mossberg found him.

Donald Poleski; abducted a girl from a
sleepaway camp and held her for a weekend in a cabin, alternating
between raping her and forcing her to play board games with him
until he decapitated her.
Donald hugged the near corner of his
cell, keeping back from the food slot and any angle the Mossberg
might have on him while he screamed “No!” over and over. Carla dug
a flashbang grenade out of the bag over her shoulder and dropped it
through the slot, stepping back and looking away, covering her
ears. The blast and white light was like a moment of suspended
time, followed by a void of silence. Carla used one of her big
brass keys to manually unlock the cell door, pulling it open on its
tracks. Donald Poleski was crumpled in the corner, hands pawing
weakly at the air. She stepped inside, and blew his head off at
close range.

“She was my baby!” she screamed.

Below, Kelvin Finch pressed his face against
the food slot. “You’re crazy, you bitch!”

Dean Frye ran, the echoes of his boots
following him. Ahead of him, a light followed by a pair of running
men appeared, Pico and Moore from the PC.

“What are you guys doing?” he demanded. “Why
aren’t you at your post?”

Moore, overweight and breathing hard from
the exertion, bent over and put his hands on his knees, unable to
speak. Pico was puffing too, but between breathes managed, “Sgt.
Mendez relieved us. Told us to report to you at the arsenal.”

In the distance behind them came the ghostly
boom of a shotgun.

Dean gritted his teeth, jerking a thumb.
“Get moving, gear up and find the lieutenant.” Without waiting for
a response, he ran past them.

Tommy Lee Halsey also tried hiding under his
bunk. It didn’t save him. Anthony Braccio, a car mechanic who
violated his wife’s restraining order and beat and murdered both
her and their daughter, stayed in the near corner and tried the
reason with the murderous sergeant. It took a flashbang to get him
out of the corner, and then the Mossberg spoke.

Carla’s head was ringing and she had to grip
the railing as she stumbled down the stairs from the upper tier,
pausing at the bottom to regain her balance before feeding fresh
rounds into the shotgun.

“Halfway there, Finch,” she yelled, her
fingers fumbling a shell and dropping it. No matter, she had
plenty.

“You’re out of your fucking mind!” Finch
screamed from the other end of the block. “I don’t know what the
fuck you’re talking about!”

“You remember number seven. I stood there
while you told HBO how much fun you had with my little girl. I read
your letters a thousand times.” She chambered a round. “You made me
think there was some chance, made me think she was still alive even
after you had her in the ground.” Carla moved to the first cell.
Sampson Jeffries; a hospital orderly who over the course of a
year molested three children in a terminal ward before smothering
them with their pillows.
He was tucked in a corner.

“Crazy bitch. They’re gonna kill you!”

Carla used a flashbang, but caught a fair
amount of it herself. She managed to open the cell door, but then
fell to her knees in the entrance, her head spinning and her vision
a tight little cone. Sampson Jeffries moaned on the floor nearby,
trying to climb to his hands and knees.

Dean Frye reached the outer door to the
bubble and used the manual release to pull it open, quickly moving
to the inner door. He had heard more shooting, recognized the sound
of the grenades, and now in the dimness of the emergency lights
beyond he could see Carla lying in the open cell doorway on the
first level at the far right.

The door wouldn’t open. He heaved against
it, felt a little play, but it was jammed.

“Carla!” he shouted through the glass,
banging a fist against it to get her attention. “Carla, stop! Stop
this!”

Carla got to her hands and knees as Sampson
Jeffries got to his feet. He made a growling noise and kicked her,
landing a bare foot in her ribs before stumbling, still dazed from
the blast, waving his arms to keep his balance. Carla grunted and
fell onto her side, seeing the big man looming over her. She clawed
the 9mm automatic from her hip holster and fired six rounds at a
range of three feet. Two whined off the cement wall behind him, but
four found their mark, slamming into flesh. From the low angle, one
caught Jeffries under the chin, and blew out through the top of his
head.

Her head felt like it was filled with wet
cotton, and she shook it as she got to her feet, recovered her
shotgun and staggering to the next cell.

“How do you feel, Finch?” Her own voice
sounded far away. “Helpless? Knowing no one is coming to save
you?”

At the other end, Finch shrieked an animal
noise out into the common area.

“That was how Anita felt,” Carla called.
“Helpless. Frightened. She couldn’t understand any of it.”

“
Crazy bitch! Crazy bitch! Crazy
bitch!
Heeeelp!”

Edward Quince; abducted a little boy from
a church picnic, and after he was done with him, pushed him off the
top of a construction site.
Quince tried to block the food slot
with his mattress as Tyrone Lawrence had done. The Mossberg blew
apart both the mattress and Edward Quince.

“All she knew was fear, Finch! All she knew
was that she wanted her Mommy, and was being hurt by a monster.”
They were all monsters in here. Beyond serving her purpose of
terrorizing Kelvin Finch, Carla had long ago decided that they all
needed to die.

The King was wailing, a high, hysterical
sound. “It’s not my fault! I’m sick! I can’t help it!” His fists
thudded against his cell door. “She loved me! She loved me and she
cried for you at the end!”

Carla pumped another round into the
Mossberg, her teeth clenched so tight she thought they might crack,
and took a step towards his cell and finish it. But then she moved
to the next door. “Be right with you, Finch.”

Larry Colt; after online pedophile sites
no longer gave him the kick he needed, he snatched a little girl
from a mall and raped her in his trailer for two days before
chopping her up – as well as his own mother – and burying her in
the back yard.
Another flashbang was needed to get his out of
his corner, but this time Carla was more cautious, stepping well
back and covering up before the blast. Larry actually tried to pick
up the grenade before it detonated, and when it did, it blew his
fingers off. He was curled in a fetal position on the floor,
choking and pressing his bloody stumps to the sides of his head
when Carla rolled the door open. She put the shotgun’s muzzle
against his upper lip and fired.

Dean Frye roared in frustration as he threw
his weight against the door, again and again, feeling it give a
little with each yank. “Carla, stop!” he shouted through the glass.
Stop, honey, stop!”

“Death is coming for you, Finch. Can you
feel it?”

Lamar Templeton; caught with a murdered
infant
. A flashbang put him on the floor, and the Mossberg sent
him to hell.

Carla’s face was wet with tears. “She was my
baby, Finch. She had a life and you took it away. You made her die
in fear.” She pumped a new round. “And I’m coming for you.”

Kelvin Finch’s wails turned to shrieking
sobs for help.

Ruben Marquis; a skinny, former
accountant with thick glasses, who once took vacations to Southeast
Asia in order to purchase and use young boys. Back in the U.S. he
grabbed a neighbor’s five-year-old in his apartment building,
sexually asphyxiating him. Marquis was found crying over the
body.
Now he was crying again, just sitting on his bunk with
his face in his hands.

Carla cut him down without a word.

“Almost done, Finch,” she called, only one
door down from his cell. “Almost there.”

The king was screaming himself hoarse.

“Shut the fuck up!” Linus James bellowed
through the adjacent food slot. “Sergeant! Hey Sergeant! It’s Finch
you want, I ain’t did nothing to your little girl.”

Carla walked to his cell.

“Go on now, blow that motherfucker away and
leave old Linus alone. He’s the one done it.” Linus stared at her
through the slot, his eyes rolling like a panicky horse. “Please,
Sergeant, go on finish that sick motherfucker.”

Carla thrust the Mossberg through the slot.
Linus James squealed and tried to run the eight feet to the far end
of his cell. The Mossberg blew his spine out through his belly, and
painted the wall.