Lights Out (6 page)

“My stomach hurts sometimes.”

“Boo-hoo. You know the drill; everyone works. No exceptions.”

“I know.”

“I don’t give a damn how many tummy aches you have.”

“I know.”

“That’s good to hear. Now, am I going to have to walk you to work detail late again anytime soon?”

“I do not know. My stomach hurts sometimes.”

Nicholas stopped short, and Maggot followed his example. He kept his eyes down, examining his worn shoes. A hole marked the top of his right sneaker. As he watched, he wiggled his big toe. It looked like he was waving hello to himself, and he almost smiled, but then Officer Nicholas placed an open palm on his chest.

“Are you being cute with me, Maggot? I’m not sure I can handle cute right now.”

“No.”

“I’m sorry? I couldn’t really make that out?”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“No, sir. I am not being cute.”

“Happy to hear it.” The officer’s hand slid upward to touch Maggot’s cheek, a gesture that was both tender and terrible. “We’ve got a good thing going, you and me. I don’t want you to go fucking it up by getting me mad. Now, are you going to be okay?”

Maggot shook his head, looked back down at his shoes. He gave his toe another wiggle, and again he fought off a smile.

“I am okay,” he said.

“Mags.”

“I want to go to work now.”

He heard another sigh, this one longer, annoyed. One of his hands curl into a fist, his nails digging into the skin of his palm, and he forced it open again, demanded his muscles relax as they were told.

“Good, let’s go,” Officer Nicholas said.

The clacking of shoes rang out again, and Maggot followed the sound down the corridor. He followed Nicholas around one corner, two, never raising his eyes. Instead, he examined the dirty floor as it flowed past, and he thought about what he had in common with it.

The footsteps rounded a corner and suddenly stopped. Maggot heard the guard let out a rushed, “Oh, fuck,” and then the footsteps were running away, and the swinging doors that sealed off the morgue were flying open.

“Jesus Christ!” came the guard’s voice, sharp with fear.

Maggot looked up, and he saw the morgue doors sway back and forth on their hinges. He saw nothing past them but the shining metal cabinets on the opposite wall. It looked no different than normal, but then he realized there was no guard standing outside the doors.

Slowly, he approached. As the doors swung open and shut, open and shut, he heard snatches of sound, Officer Nicholas yelling into his radio.

“...The morgue...

“...Bodies...

“...Right away!”

He reached out to touch the doors as their swinging slowed to a stop. Gently, he pushed them open. He stepped through into the cool, sterile room where he worked five days out of every week, helping Dr. Wilson in any way he could. He liked the doctor, who treated him well and insisted on calling him Jim, which just happened to be Maggot’s real name.

But Dr. Wilson did not greet him by his real name this time. The man did not say anything, in fact, and with his throat all ripped up like that, Maggot didn’t expect him to make any kind of sound. The doctor lay twisted on the floor, near the large bodies of two prisoners. They were mangled together, and there was an awful lot of blood. The other guard, the one who should have been in the hallway, lay in two torn pieces on either side of the room.

Maggot turned to Officer Nicholas, who was looking around with eyes so wide the whites showed all around the irises. He looked funny, like a clown or something, and Maggot laughed. He could not help it. The fat guard looked like he had just seen a ghost, and the way his jaw was trembling and making both of his cheeks shake was so funny!

Maggot let out peals of laughter that echoed through the small room, and he did not even care that there was so much blood in the room. He did not care that the only man who called him by his real name was dead. It just made everything that much more hysterical! Even stop when Officer Nicholas whipped him in the stomach with his metal baton, he did not stop laughing. He did not stop as he crumpled to the ground, fresh tears chasing each other down his cheeks, and the fat man was running out of the room and telling him, “Stop that fucking laughing, if you know what’s good for you!” Try as he might, could not seem to make himself shush, though. He just kept guffawing until his laughter turned into a chain of body-wracking sobs, and he realized that it was not funny anymore and that he was terrified of the blood-spackled room, if the cloying scent of destroyed life.

“Help me,” he cried as a bunch of clomping feet ran into the room, bringing with them angry voices--confused voices.

Frightened voices.

“God, please help me.”

Six

They avoided the light, staying close to the shadows as they traveled through Burnham’s catacomb-like hallways. A voice called to them, telling them exactly where to go, and they moved with new speed, new grace. They felt a great new strength course through their muscles, felt warm blood boil in their bellies. None of this felt strange to them. It was just a fact of their new existence. Reborn in old bodies. The same, yet somehow different. Improved.

They saw no more meat, not even when the alarms started going off, piercing their newborn ears like hot ice picks, so they kept moving, drawing closer to the voice. It sounded comforting, yet powerful, coaxing and commanding at the same time, and soon they found themselves in the tiny room with the hole in the floor. They crawled through the rough opening, scuttling through the earth like beetles, and soon they found their new father, the one with the voice, the great and terrible one who had made them. And they found two others with him, others who looked somehow familiar. Hunger hovered around the pair like a scent. It was dark, but they could still see, and though they had fed, their hunger was already beginning to call to them once again.

Patience,
the voice said. They listened.

One of them, a creature that remembered the name Webber as though it belonged to somebody else from a long ago age, shuddered violently in the small cavern. Its body ached, muscles constricting not out of will, but out of pain. It remembered poisons it had long ago put into its body, and it remembered a similar pain once the poisons had no longer been available. The pain had been very bad before, but now that the creature’s senses had grown more aware, more powerful, the pain was all but unbearable. The creature mewled, allowing long, high notes of anguish to slip between its lips. Its new father ran cold and gentle fingers through its hair, and the pain receded the slightest bit. The father pressed a wrist to its mouth, and it bit with its new teeth, sucking the blood that pulsed warm and wet into its mouth. The pain almost disappeared, and it sucked harder at the wound, but its father pulled away.

Enough.

More. Please.

No. Wait.

It nodded in the darkness, knowing its father could see the motion. The fingers returned to its hair, no longer stroking but pulling, wrenching the creature closer before shoving it away.

It curled in tight with the others, staying close to its father, and closed its eyes. Sleep would come any moment, and when it awoke, the safety of nightfall would allow him to feed again.

Seven

“Son of a bitch!”

Timms eyed the scene, and he imagined he could feel his blood pressure rise. His pulse pounded in his temples, and his face felt flushed above his collar. He shook his head. Bullshit, complete and utter bullshit that something like this could happen right under his nose. He had to get Burnham back under control.

“Lockdown. Throw the whole goddamn place into lockdown, okay? Do it now.”

Morrow turned away from the blood-splashed walls to cock an eyebrow at the warden. Other officers were already stretching yellow crime scene tape across the doors.

“Are you sure that’s the best thing to do right now?”

“Goddammit, how fucking stupid do you think I am? We’ve got four new corpses and five missing,
and three of those can’t even walk the fuck out of here!”

The Officer held up his hands in surrender. “Fine.” He fingered the microphone attached to his shoulder. “Go to lockdown. All units.”

The claxon screech of a siren filled the air at once, and a voice distorted by loudspeakers that were a little too old called out
“Lockdown! Lockdown!”

“You happy?”

“No. I’m nowhere fucking close to happy, okay? As a matter of fact, I’m really pissed off. Does that answer your question?”

“More or less.”

“Are the press still outside?”

“I would imagine.”

“Goddamn it. They’re going to have a field day with this one.” He collapsed in a chair.

“Ron, you might want to....”

“What?”

Morrow motioned at the chair. Droplets of blood dotted its surface.

“Aw, shit!” Timms leaped out of the chair, trying his best to brush himself clean and only smearing the blood into streaks as a result. He cocked a leg back and kicked one of the room’s metal cabinets. The booming sound of the impact rang throughout the morgue. Ron winced, then pressed his fingers to his temples, rubbing them. He found a sink and ran his hands under the cold water as he checked himself in the mirror.

Jesus, he barely recognized himself. Thick bags hung under his eyes, and his skin was pale, waxy. It seemed to hang from his skull like old cheese. The cuffs and collar of his shirt were soaked with sweat, and his suit jacket appeared rumpled, ill fitting. He didn’t look like a warden anymore, just a joke.

“So, what are you going to do?” Morrow asked.

“First off, I’m going to take a fucking shower and put some clean clothes on. I can’t talk to anybody like this.”

“Of course.”

Timms flicked water from his hands and wiped his sweaty brow. “I guess I’d better call the Governor soon; pray I’ve still got a job once I’m done.”

“Best of luck.”

“That’s real inspiring, Ray. You should write children’s books.”

Morrow shook his head. “You’re going to be fine, Ron. You have six years of a more or less spotless record. This shit happens every now and again, okay? It’s part of the job or something. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“But it happened on my watch. My neck’s on the line for this.”

“You’ll be fine. Try to relax. I know how idiotic that sounds, but it’s better than blowing your top.”

Timms nodded. “Thanks.” He shrugged his jacket back into place. “Wanna walk me back to my office?"

“Sure.”

Morrow reached the doorway first and held the crime scene tape back while Timms ducked under it. As he passed beneath it, he couldn’t help but chuckle.

“What’s so funny?”

“The morgue’s a crime scene, Ray. If we find these bodies, where the hell are we gonna put ‘em?”

***

“Lockdown!”

Diggs moved across the floor, rolling with each step. Tree walked beside him, blocking out the light with his gigantic form.

“So, we gonna play with they bullshit, Diggs? Gonna keep the cappin’ low ‘til they find who killed them crackas?”

“Shit, man. Think they can prod my ass in any direction and that’s the way I’m gonna roll, they out of they goddamn minds. I do things my way, or I don’t do shit.

“But, hell. I ain’t got beef with nobody but Sweeny and the rest of his skinhead bitches. Nobody steps up to me, an’ I ain’t gonna start no extra shit. One thing those Mexicans and Italians got right--the quieter this shithole is, the better it runs.”

“Lockdown!”

He reached the stairway, Tree right behind, and began to climb. Unit C stood four levels high, walkways of concrete and iron, each lined with barred cells, surrounding the open room. Two flights of metal stairs, and they’d be right on top of their front yard.

Cons swarmed up the iron staircases, and their footsteps thundered through the room, the noise growing to a terrible rumble. The others were really hauling ass, but Diggs and Tree stayed cool, taking their time. Why hurry when you’re just gonna get locked up once you reach home base, right? Diggs sneered. He really was the smartest motherfucker in the place.

They reached the second level and kept climbing. Cell doors began to slam shut all around. Diggs spoke up so Tree could hear him.

“A lockdown’s sure as shit something we don’t need, though. Gonna give commerce a real kick in the balls.”

“I thought the priest said we wasn’t gonna go to lockdown?”

“S’what he told me.” He stopped, gripping the rail with both hands and looking out over the unit. Cons stood at their cell doors, arms slipped through the bars, looking around. As the noise of clanging doors and rumbling footsteps quieted, a new sound rose to take its place. Diggs had heard it before--the hushed, tense sound of whispers. “Something bad musta gone down.”

“Like what?”

“Don’t know for sure. Somethin’ real awful. The Rev. don’t lie, least he never has before.”

“Hey, Diggs!” It was one of the guards, staring up at him from the landing below. His eyes were angry. “Move your ass, okay? We got lockdown happening here, not recess.”

Diggs turned to face the guard. He reached down and gave his dick a squeeze, jerked it toward the uniformed asshole. “Sure thing, officer! Maybe you come see me after lights out?”

He turned to Tree and laughed, held out his hand for a slap, but Tree was looking past him. Suddenly, the big man yelled, “Get down!” and wrapped both arms around Diggs and twisted. Diggs flew off his feet and tumbled down the stairs, and at the same time he heard a snarling warcry from above him followed by the sharp, quick sound of a shiv piercing flesh. Tree let out a sharp grunt, and then the guard let out a yell and raced up the stairs.

Diggs turned to find out just what the hell was happening.

Tree’s arm was bleeding bad from three different places, and one of the wounds still had the handle of the white man’s shiv sticking out of it. Tree had the Aryan bent backwards over the rail, one meaty hand underneath his chin, and the guard was struggling to get around the bodyguard and take over the situation.