Jenkins banged on the bars again. “Hey, where is everyone?” It was gone seven in the morning. That was when the lights came on with a bang, to start another monotonous day of drudgery. He started to get hungry; he could normally smell the food, for what it was worth, drifting up from the kitchens. However, this morning, not a thing. No food cart with the wonky wheel, pushed by Albert with the wonky eye, who dispensed the rancid lukewarm breakfasts to the killers on the sixth floor.
“Come on, let me outa here, I need water.” He slumped and rested his head against the cool metal of the bars. It was gonna be another broiling hot day. His dried throat hurt something rotten and he was already sweating like a pig. To top it all, the new prisoner they’d stuck in with him last night stunk to high heaven. “Hey, get me outa here. There’s something wrong with the new meat. I think he’s dying! You gotta get me away from him.”
He looked over at his new cellmate, Winston Kincaid, a serial killer sent down for five confirmed kills but rumored to be more, and up to twenty women if you could believe Winston himself, but then who’d exaggerate something like that? Killing women then molesting their corpses — why brag about that. Fucking pervert. He’d been dead against sharing a cell with him, put up all sorts of protests. Jenkins was a killer for sure, but he weren’t no twisted pervert. The dude should be in the nuthouse not in with them — the elite of the murderers. If he weren’t insane then execute him instead of wasting the taxpayer’s money and fouling up Jenkins air.
“Hey, you motherfucker.” He slapped Kincaid on the rump. How could he sleep so soundly? First night too, most new inmates spent the first night booing like a little baby. “Hey you,” he croaked, and swallowed hard, trying to make moisture for his aching throat. “Move to the back of the cell would ya? You’re stinking up the place, Jesus.”
The cell was only six foot by twelve foot and designed for one man; the stacked bed took up half of the width of the tiny cell and over half its length. The stainless steel sink and john took up the rest of the space.
Jenkins had spent most of the first decade of incarceration having the cell to himself and that’s the way he liked it. Since the government cutbacks, the authorities had installed the stacked beds and forced him to share the tiny floor space with a succession of murdering dross. However, this latest inmate was absolutely the pits. At least the previous tenants had the honor of being honest to goodness badass cutthroats not this twisted degenerate stinking up the place. He seemed to be suffering from some sorta ailment. He huddled into the corner of his upper bunk, seniority stated Jenkins took the lower one, and had coughed and hacked all night. Already on Jenkins shit list for keeping him awake all damned night, his chances of survival on the sixth floor were slim to say the least. His life was gonna be hell amongst the guys on E block, they had no time for rumored pederasts, they had their code where suspected child molesters were at the bottom of the pile — lower than bottom if there was such a place. As soon as the cell-door opened the guys would be lining up to inflict their justly retribution.
He didn’t hold out much hope of Kincaid lasting the next twenty-four hours. They could rely on the guards to look the other way. Especially the latest batch of new recruits, who to a man were only there for the paycheck, none claiming a vocational pull towards the prison service. Nope, they were on minimum wage and couldn’t care less what happened to the dregs, like Kincaid.
Jenkins throat felt constricted, he ran his tongue over his dried lips. Man, this was intolerable. He was dying of thirst, the blast furnace heat was something rotten and what was that stink?
The only source of the stench could be his new cellmate. “Hey, you, Kincaid, get outa ya bunk. Jesus, what is that smell? Have you shit yourself?”
He took a tentative step towards the recumbent figure. Kincaid stirred, rolled over to face him. Jenkins took a step back in shock when he saw Kincaid’s face covered in black rings of weeping pus. His bloodshot eyes swiveled to face him, and black blood oozed from his nostrils. His body shook and convulsed. Jenkins backed away, but bashed into the bars in no time, when to his utter horror Kincaid projectile vomited, and thick, foul smelling vomit ejected from him, covering Jenkins in puke.
Jenkins hit the bars frantically making as much noise as he could to get attention. “Guard!” he croaked. “Help me!” He slid down the bars, his eyes popped out on stalks, as he stared at the wretched, living corpse in front of him.
Jenkins Forest the meanest badass to have ever entered the Florida state correctional system started to blub.
10:55 AM
The dyed-blond Submariner Pete Williams sighed, thinking it would be months until he breathed fresh air again. He’d sailed from the port of Miami early that morning on the USS Amarillo, a nuclear powered submarine, which had a payload of forty-eight cruise missiles, the one vessel alone having enough power to wipe out half the population of the earth.
Ten of the submariners out of a complement of one hundred and twenty had failed to return and they were in all sorts of trouble. Ten no-shows was a record by nine. He could only remember one no-show before; you went AWOL on pain of death, which is what had happened as it turned out, as the no-show had died.
This was about the only reason for going AWOL, ‘Absent With-Out Leave’, and then only just, but ten? He’d seen Donny, one of the no shows, leave the Fairy Grotto with Big Mary, but no one ever doubted he wouldn’t be back for the subs departure. He and Donny both knew that the other was gay, along with many other crewmembers who were half-in or half-out of the closet on the vessel, yet even today in the 21st Century; it paid to keep their sexuality hidden.
Now they were off on a six-month tour. He sneezed and wondered if he should have seen the doctor and got himself signed off from the trip. The last thing you needed in the claustrophobic metal tube was a submariner with a contagious bug; it would spread like wildfire throughout the vessel and overwhelm them in no time. He sneezed again so violently that it made his nose bleed. It must have been the guy on the Metrorail he’d bet. That guy hacked up and sneezed right in his face. He’d wanted to punch him out for that, but managed to control himself, not wanting to waste precious shore leave detained by the police.
He wiped his nose noting that the blood seemed thicker than usual, and blacker.
His head pounded, he shivered with a chill and he ached under his arms, he undid his tunic and was appalled to see dark swellings. He rubbed and it burst covering his hand in thick oozing pus. He backed into the bulkhead and wondered if he had made a mistake by not reporting to the ships surgeon — a deadly mistake. Although, as it turned out, from a contingent of one hundred and twenty men, he would be the only person still alive in twenty-four hours.
CHAPTER 8
11:00 AM
At eleven a.m., Eastern Standard Time Sophie sat in front of her television and on the dot, as promised President Burgess addressed the Nation. Smooth as silk the President addressed the viewers. “Good morning, fellow Americans. It is with a heavy heart and after much soul searching that as of now I have placed southern Florida under quarantine… I’ll get to ‘why’ shortly, but it is not without reason that we would take such drastic action.” A map of Florida filled the screen with two dotted lines traversing across the state from left to right. “Everyone below the lower line, roughly from Fort Myers on the gulf coast to Palm Beach on the Atlantic coast are under quarantine, and, a curfew of 1900 hours, will be enforced. This next line approximately ten miles north, is no-man’s-land and will be policed vigorously, this is no time for pussy-footing around, anyone caught will we be detained indefinitely and any sort of resistance will be met by a deadly response.”