by L. A. Cruz
Then he dropped the hammer.
The bolt unlocked. Pinder grabbed the door knob as if she were wearing welding gloves and about to enter a burning house. She turned it slowly and when the latch had receded behind the strike plate, she yanked the door open and she and Dunning rushed inside.
“Close it!” Lawless said.
“Me?” Helia said.
“Yes!”
Helia slammed the door shut behind them and Lawless swiped the card. The deadbolt engaged again, locking Pinder and Lawless in the room with the creature.
“You never do this by yourself,” Lawless said. “It takes a minimum of three men.”
She wondered if he meant three men and a woman, or three people. But before she got a chance to clarify, that pile of bones and flesh in the corner suddenly jerked to life as if being yanked upward by marionette strings; its movements were gangly and awkward and jerky, yet somehow fluid. Its limbs snapped from spot to spot as it popped to its feet and charged the two suited figures, leaving a mess of feces and drool and what she could've sworn was a sausage link of intestine on the tiled floor.
It leapt at the two Keepers, its arms out, its fingers like crooked claws, and changed course in midair for Pinder’s neck. Dunning wound up with both fists as if he were about to do a double-handed backhand and swung at it and hit it right in the sternum.
Helia could hear the crack even behind the closed door and the glass, the impact in its chest sounding like jumping up and landing a pair of heavy boots on a pile of twigs.
The hideous thing fell backward and landed smack on its back on the hard floor. Its head snapped back and its skull struck the floor and flattened like the top of an egg smashed on a counter. A little splash of brains and black blood jumped out the crack like oil splashing out of Tita Annabelle’s frying pan when she dropped it on the floor.
Despite the injuries, the creature rose from the floor. Pinder dove on top of it and grabbed its arm and turned it over onto its stomach, its shoulder coming out of the socket, and the flesh stripped off the top of the elbow down to the forearm inside her glove as easily as if she had taken hold of a very ripe banana and dug her claws into the peel.
Lawless screwed up his face. “That one hasn’t eaten in a while.”
With a hand on its wrist bone, Pinder twisted the humerus behind the thing’s back and then grabbed the other arm and yanked it back, the second shoulder popping out of its socket too and hanging loose inside the rotting skin. She crossed the wrists behind its back and tucked them underneath the exposed spinal cord.
“Handcuffs don’t work,” Lawless said. “They just slip right off. Sometimes, the hands fall off too. Totally worthless.“
Helia watched Dunning grab a large hand truck leaning against the wall. It was a cross between a gurney and a moving device and there were leather belts hanging off the side.
He whipped it around and wheeled it over to Pinder. Pinder put a thickly padded arm under the creature's neck and it snapped its teeth and tried to chew through the padding. With an arm under the creature's chin, she yanked backwards, pulling it at an impossible angle, bending it as far as only the world's most gifted contortionist could go, and then in a single maneuver, she rolled back onto the tips of her boots and straight up into a squat, and brought the creature to its feet against her chest, hugging it tightly. She turned it around and shoved it onto the upright gurney.
Dunning fastened the restraints, one around its shins, one around its waist, and a second one around its navel, pinning its arms to the side. He placed a final belt around its shoulders.
Then he took a metal face mask like the one used for Hannibal Lecter, and Pinder pressed it against the creature's chopping jaws, her gloved fists making a direct impression in its face.
Finally, they backed off. The thing stood there against the hand truck, the restraints themselves cutting into its flesh. It wiggled and squirmed, strips of flesh coming loose. Its bowels leaked and ran in dark red down its tattered jeans.
Helia swore she saw a bulge in its crotch. Was that horrible thing enjoying this?
Lawless adjusted his glasses. “That is literally a boner,” he said. “A piece of its tailbone is sticking through its dick area.”
“Thank you for the medical evaluation,” Helia said.
Pinder and Dunning gave a heavily-gloved thumbs up.
Lawless swiped his card again and the deadbolt disengaged. Lawless opened the door for them and a new stench escaped the room. Helia recoiled and buried her nose in her elbow.
Dunning and Pindar wheeled the creature into the chamber.
“Good work men,” Lawless said.
“In case you forgot, I’m a bitch,” Pinder said. “Like her.”
“You could have fooled me,” Lawless said.
“Maybe next time you’d like to join me in there,” Pinder said.
Lawless grinned. “Maybe you’d like to read the entire operations manual.”
“You two quit yapping,” Dunning said. “And let’s show Corporal Crane how we take this sonuvabitch to his quarters.”
CHAPTER 18
They wheeled the creature on the hand truck into the main room with the elevator shaft. The temperature instantly rose more than a degree. Underneath the wheels, the creature, now vertical, left a trail of blood and bile and feces.
“New guy cleans up the mess,” Lawless said. He tensed his neck muscles in mock solidarity to show it was nothing personal. “Sorry, Crane. It is what it is.”
“But not the new gal," Helia said.
“She’s got a point,” Pinder said.
“C’mon, you know what I mean.”
“In fact, if my memory serves me correctly, the newest guy here is you,” Dunning said. “Ain’t that right, Sergeant Lawless?”
“Oh c’mon. It’s a common—“
“Are you arguing with someone who outranks you?”
“No, Sergeant,” Lawless said meekly.
They were directly across from the elevator. Dunning swiped the scanner on the side of the day room door. It opened into a giant, corridor. It was at least the length of half a football field. Almost as wide, too. Only two light bulbs hung from the ceiling, two light bulbs for the entire area, and it was dim and cold. Hardly a day room, Helia thought.
She recognized the design from her training. It was a first-generation concept, similar to that of the Eastern State penitentiary, but far from the design of the current Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth. One long corridor down the middle served as the day room where the inmates could gather for rec time, but she had a feeling these inmates were never let out of their cells.
There were two stories of tiers and the space itself was cavernous, three stories high. The ceiling was jagged with spiky shadows, like sharpened teeth, small stalactites growing from mineral deposits seeping through the concrete.
Each cell was separated by a 2 foot concrete wall between them. There were no doors, but bars, and the stench was near unbearable.
“What’s on the second tier?”
“Some of the more feeble arrivals,” Dunning said. “We stay down here. The Colonel attends to them personally. They don’t last long.”
They left Lawless behind to get a mop and wheeled the new inmate down the corridor. They passed two more Keepers on either side of the door.
“Looks like you got a live one,” the Keeper on the right said. Soon, she’d learn his name was Spec Four Tim Wallace. “So to speak.”
They wheeled the hand truck toward the end of the cellblock, the wheels on the truck squeaking shrilly enough to give her goosebumps. Helia kept counting. Thirteen cells on each side on the ground floor and another thirteen equally spaced, along the catwalk on the second floor for a grand total of fifty-two cells.
“When the Puritans built this place, they thought that the best way to do penance was far away from the eyes of God,” Dunning said. “They thought that access to sunlight was unbefitting of those who had fouled the Lord’s name. They b
elieved that the witches who were incarcerated here would either find salvation through pain or rot in the process. I need you to note that long hours without sunlight affect us, too Corporal. Make sure you take care of yourself. Use the mood room often. Eat well. Do your pushups. Stay sane.”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Helia said.
As they passed the cells, one of the creatures lunged at the bars. He hit it so hard, it rattled the entire cage and chunks of flesh flew off his body and smacked Helia in the side of the face.
“Uggh,” Pinder said. “Nasty. He got you good.”
Helia’s heart raced. She wiped off the gunk and looked at it. It was a fragment of bone and her hands were sticky with blood.
“Oh God. Am I infected?”
“Did it get in your eyes?” Dunning said.
She blinked rapidly. “I don’t think so.”
“Do you have an open cut on your cheek?”
Helia touched her face. “No.”
“Then you’re fine.”
“You’re sure?”
“If touching their filth was enough to do it,” Pinder said, “We’d all be dead.”
They continued to walk down the corridor, the cells thump, thumping in succession as the creatures came to life and hurled themselves at the bars. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she saw that not all the creatures stirred immediately. Some merely twitched, nothing more than piles of clothes and bones slumped against the wall, while others clawed at the floor and stuck their chins under the bars and reached at them with whatever ragged tongues they had left.
At the end of the corridor, two more Keepers stood at parade rest against the dark brick wall. Dunning thumbed the side of his helmet. There was a radio button there.
“This is Sergeant Dunning. We need access to cell number thirteen, first tier.”
The voice was loud enough to hear from the inside of his helmet: “Roger that.”
“That was the control room," Pinder whispered through her visor. A buzz traveled overhead and then down the wall, and the lock disengaged on the last cell door on their left.
Pinder stepped forward and opened it. “Here's the fun part.”
“Then what was all that?” Helia said.
Dunning appreciated the quip and grinned. “You’ve got some bite. I like it.”
Dunning rolled the hand truck into the cell and Pinder followed him.
“Close the door behind us,” Dunning said.
Helia closed the cell door.
Dunning pushed the button on his helmet. “We need a temporary lock on cell thirteen.”
“Roger that," the control room said.
The deadbolt locked behind them.
Helia stepped forward for a glimpse into the dimly lit cell. There were no shelves, no bunk, no sink, no toilet, only the remains of different colored spots on the concrete floor. Probably stains. The tiny holes in the cinderblock walls where masonry screws had attached the sink were still there.
“Didn't your mother ever tell you not to taunt the animals?” Pinder said through the bars. “Step back, honey.”
Helia did as she was told.
Dunning rolled the hand truck right up to the brick wall and pushed the creature into the wall hard enough that it's chest flattened. With the creature wedged between the wall and the hand truck, Pinder then slipped a gloved hand in front of the creature’s chest—she had to dig into his ribs to get her fingers in there—and she unlatched the restraints.
With each loosening of the belts, the creature squirmed more. Once its arms were free, it flailed on both sides, and Dunning pushed it even harder into the wall, its head now half crushed at an ungodly angle.
Pinder squatted and yanked the last restraint off its feet and it kicked at the sides and tried to use what strength was left in its legs to push itself away from the wall. It had a flexibility that no human could ever achieve, able to bend its joints in any direction it wanted, and it managed to get a knee between the other knee and the bone on bone gave it enough room to shove it backward.
Helia gasped.
Dunning lost his footing in the heavy suit and fell down. The hand truck fell back on top of him. The creature turned its head so severely that it went one hundred and eighty degrees before its spinal cord caught. Its shoulders whipped around and it pounced on top of Dunning, it's sharpened teeth going for his neck.
He pushed up on the hand truck to keep a barrier between him and the creature and it snarled and black blood flew from the corners of its mouth and splattered on his visor.
Instinctively, Helia reached for the gate to pull it open, but Pinder put up hand.
“Are you nuts? Stay back,” she said. “It’ll be on you in a second and sink its teeth into your arms. Oh you’ll have empathy then, honey. You'll know exactly what these creatures feel like. Although, you may only have a day or two of processing that feeling before your brain rots and leaks out your lips and your nostrils fall off and your heart turns black and shrivels up inside your chest.”
“But—“
“He’s fine,” Pinder said. “Step back.”
Helia did.
Pinder hooked a forearm underneath the creature’s throat and yanked it off the hand truck.
Dunning scooted himself back and thumbed his walkie. “We need a second unlock on cell thirteen.”
“Roger that.”
The buzz traveled down the block and down the wall. The dead bolt slid back.
“Open the door,” Pinder said.
Helia slid it open. Pinder yanked the creature toward the wall, her arm still in his neck, its limbs thrashing, and Dunning got to his feet and rolled the hand truck out the cell.
The creature flailed against Pinder's chest, her arm still holding under its chin. It pulled away from her, its neck stretching, its entire spinal column coming loose.
Pinder threw her entire body into a twist and shoved the creature against the far wall. And then she turned on her own heels and leapt out the cell.
Dunning slammed the door closed just as the creature lunged at them. The bars gave a shudder on impact and black bile splashed onto their suits.
Dunning put all his strength into keeping the gate closed and then Helia joined him and pressed against his back.
Pinder yanked her away. “Jeebus, get back. Are you stupid? You don’t have a suit.”
The cell door jumped open. Pinder jumped on Dunning’s back and the extra weight forced the door closed.
Dunning thumbed his helmet. “Lock thirteen!”
The buzz traveled down the wall and the lock engaged and rammed home. The cell was secure.
They all relaxed, wilting.
“Strong sons of bitches,” Pinder said through gritted teeth.
The creature retreated into the shadows. Half its face was left in the bars.
“Let’s get these suits hosed down,” Dunning said and headed for the exit.
Helia followed. “Is it always like that?”
“That was an easy one. He was half gone already, mostly wasted,” Pinder said. “I suggest you get a few minutes of shuteye. Five AM wake up call in an hour.”
“Yes, get some shuteye,” Dunning said. He glanced at the tattoo on her bare shoulder. “When did that happen?”
“When did what happen?”
“That.”
She glanced at her shoulder. A trickle of blood was running off the snake’s fangs, trickling down her arm.
Pinder and Dunning shared a look.
“I think you better check in with the Colonel first,” Dunning said.
CHAPTER 19
Helia knocked on the Colonel's door. It was silent for a moment. She knocked again.
“Who is it?”
“Corporal Crane.”
“Hold on.”
She heard a shuffle behind the door and then it opened a crack.
He did not look sleepy. “What’s the matter Corporal?”
“Sergeant Dunning said I should come see you.”
He looked at
her arm. His eyes lingered. “What happened?”
“Shrapnel.”
He opened the door and she came in. She stole a glimpse of herself in the mirror above his sink. Her hair was matted and greasy. It had been so cold that she hadn't realized how much she had been sweating. A streak of black bile ran underneath her left eye like warpaint. On her left arm, the blood in the snake’s mouth had dried.
“Have a seat, Corporal,” Colonel Gates said.
She sat on a hard chair in the corner. Colonel Gates opened up a medicine cabinet and took out a gauze pad and bottle of rubbing alcohol. Like picking a piece of glass out of the sole of her foot, he pulled a tiny fragment of bone out of the snake’s mouth. A tiny prick of blood welled up between the snake’s fangs and he turned over the bottle and wet the gauze and touched it to the injury. It was cold.
“Press,” he said.
She pressed two fingers to the gauze. “Am I going to be okay?”
“As far as we know, like any good disease with a moral conscience, infections are transmitted through bodily fluids. Saliva, semen, blood,” he said and dropped the chunk of bone into the waste basket. It clanged and then was still. “It looked pretty clean to me. Still, I’d keep an eye on it. If you see a black and blue bull's-eye pattern forming let me know immediately.”
Between her fingers, the gauze turned red. “What happens then?”
“Let’s cross that bridge when it comes,” he said.
Which meant they would throw her into one of those cells to rot, Helia thought. But she kept it to herself.
“I know this is a lot to take in. How are you holding up?”
“I’m okay, sir,” she said.
He nodded disapprovingly. “What’s the deal with the snake on your arm?”
“It’s personal.”
“Fair enough,” Colonel Gates said. He shuffled over to the mirror and unbuttoned his battle dress shirt. He pulled his arms out of the sleeves. Apparently, he slept in uniform too. He was wearing no undershirt underneath which certainly was not the uniform standard. He was well-built, almost impossibly so, his chest hair fine and gray. He glanced into the mirror, his eyes meeting Helia's, and she looked away.
