Sam made eye contact with a guard who carried a twelve-gauge and made sure the guard was paying attention. Then he moved toward Inmate No. 928743. “Afternoon.”
The prisoner cocked his head and regarded Sam coolly.
Sam smiled. “Listen, I don’t care what your problem is. My advice, get over it. This is your first and only warning.”
Inmate No. 928743 planted his feet shoulder-width apart, and smiled right back, equally scary and empty. Amateur tattoos, bluish gray in the hazy sunlight, crawled up his neck and all over his bald skull. “My civil rights are being violated.”
“No, no, they’re not,” Sam said. “Not yet.” With no wasted movement, he brought his lower leg up, square and true, smashing the tibia bone into Inmate’s No. 928743’s testicles. The seismic shock had barely begun rising from the prisoner’s torso into his chest when Sam broke his nose with a fast little jab.
As a teenager, Sam had taken classes from an old ex-Israeli soldier who had showed the lanky boy a few vicious Krav Maga moves. The man’s fighting philosophy was basically that if anyone was threating you, then you hurt them before they had a chance to hurt you, and hurt them bad enough that by the time they’re even thinking about getting up off the floor, you’re far, far way.
Blood exploded from Inmate No. 928743’s nostrils the same time the devastating effect of his crushed testicles hit his brain. He went down like a rotten tree, every part of him collapsing into the concrete. Sam had to give the guy credit. Inmate No. 928743 still managed to crawl forward a few feet before he curled into a fetal position and vomited on himself. Urine stained the front of his pants.
Sam turned to the guard with the .12 gauge. The guard tossed the shotgun; Sam caught it, brought the stock around and cracked the prisoner’s skull. Fresh blood erupted out of the man’s shaved head, washed over the tattoos, and spilled down over his already bleeding nose and started a puddle on the sidewalk.
Sam had deliberately hit the guy in the head with the stock, instead of some softer, perhaps more painful location, because head wounds bled like a bitch. Both Ed and Sam wanted the rest of the inmates to see the blood. You could be borderline retarded, even damn near brain damaged, but everybody coming out of the prison would understand what blood on the ground meant.
The massive lobby of the Fin was cool despite the sunlight that flooded through the three stories of windows. The three soldiers pushed through the spinning glass doors and took a moment to enjoy the delicious chill as it settled into the sweat that coated the inside of their fatigues.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” one said.
“We got thirty seconds before McLeary is on our ass,” another pointed out.
“Hello?” the third called out, moving toward the sleek front desk. “Hello?” he called again. “Anybody here?” He turned back to the first two. “Hey, you guys know if this building’s been cleared yet?”
They shrugged. The third muttered, “Shit. Just what we need. Wasting time checking an empty building.”
The second shook his head. “They shouldn’t have. Supposed to be on our grid.” He pulled out a radio and spoke into it. “Command? This is Charlie one-two-seven, that’s Charlie one-two-seven. I need confirmation on a location. Over.”
A burst of static from the radio. It swelled, then settled into a low hiss. “Command, you copy? I need verification that a building has been cleared. Over.” Still no response. “Goddamnit. These pieces of shit.”
“What do you want, man? They work in the desert,” one of the soldiers said. “Too many fucking tall buildings here.”
The third soldier stuck his head in the back office. “Hello? Hello? Anybody here? Anybody?”
Deep in the back office, Janelle was hiding under one of the desks, breathing fast, almost hyperventilating, sound asleep. She had curled up under of the far desks, wedging herself into the tightest corner possible, like a lost lamb under a dead tree, frozen in both snow and fear.
“Fuck it, dude,” the other soldier said. “We don’t get back out on the grid, McLeary’s gonna shit a brick. ’Sides, isn’t Winston and those boys supposed to double back through, confirm that everything’s been cleared?”
“Supposed to. Let’s head back outside, see if the radio works any better.”
The first two soldiers groaned when they stepped back out into the sun. The third soldier hit the button on his radio again, suddenly shielded his eyes and pointed. The other two saw the rat at once, working its way along one of the graceful, curving flower beds, trying to remain hidden under the leaves. All three soldiers opened fire.
Chips of concrete, flower petals, dirt, fertilizer, and rat flesh exploded into a pink and brown cloud. When the dust settled, there wasn’t enough left of the rat to fill a sandwich Baggie.
“I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t fun,” one of the soldiers said as they wandered over to the flowers to look for any more rats. The gunfire attracted the attention of one of the grid commanders. Once he understood that it was only one rat, he sent a decon crew over to spray the area down with the sterilization foam.
Behind them, the lobby remained empty and quiet.
Sergeant Reaves said nothing as he surveyed Don’s hospital room. He wore a hazmat suit, minus the helmet. His expression never changed as he regarded bloody corpse, the tire tracks in the blood on the floor, the overturned camera, the open cabinets. He paused and tilted his head when he saw the dead bugs. When his gaze settled on Tommy, Tommy tried not to look like a child who’d been caught trying to steal a cookie and had accidentally knocked the cookie jar to the floor where it shattered. Sergeant Reaves’s gaze never wavered.
Tommy shrugged.
Sergeant Reaves blinked, took a deep breath, held it, and walked over to Tommy, rubber hazmat boots crunching on the dried blood. He leaned over Tommy, placed one gloved hand over his face. With his thumb and forefinger, he spread Tommy’s right eyebrow and cheek, widening the eye to painful extremes. He repeated the movement with Tommy’s left eye, peering intently at Tommy’s eyeball. Satisfied, he released Tommy’s head and spun the wheelchair around, so that Tommy faced the far side of the room.
Tommy had no idea how his eyes might give something away, and had a nightmarish flash that Sergeant Reaves was simply going to pull out his pistol and put a bullet in the back of his head. He tensed, waiting for that blast of oblivion, but Sergeant Reaves simply dragged the wheelchair backwards through the blood to the doorway and out into the hallway.
Sergeant Reaves exhaled outside the room. He wheeled Tommy down the hall to the elevator and they waited in silence for the doors to open.
Tommy wondered if he was being taken back to his original room. One entire wall had been covered with a heavy curtain, and Tommy was convinced it had concealed a window. If he could just get out of his wheelchair, he might have a chance at breaking through the window. And if he could break the window, he could climb out. He didn’t care if there was a ledge or not, he’d take the risks of climbing out of a twelve- or thirteen-story room compared to facing Sergeant Reaves or Dr. Reischtal.
Tommy kept his right foot pulled in on the metal footrest, nice and snug, as if the leather strap was still wrapped around his ankle. He had no idea how he might break out of the wheelchair restraints, but he had one foot loose, and that was a start. He just needed some time alone in his room where he could break the window.
The elevator doors slid open. Sergeant Reaves wheeled Tommy inside and pushed the button for the lobby instead of going upstairs. Tommy wanted to keep quiet, wanted to be a hard-ass, didn’t want to give Sergeant Reaves the satisfaction of hearing Tommy speak first, but as the descending floor numbers flashed, his will broke. “Where we going?”
For a long time, Tommy didn’t think Sergeant Reaves would answer. Tommy knew he had fucked up, and swore at himself for being weak.