23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale v-4

by David Wellington

  Clara looked up at Guilty Jen, who shook her head.

  “Hsu’s here, alright,” Jen said, “but I’m doing the talking. You know me, Augie. This is Guilty Jen.”

  “Oh yes? She went to you for protection?”

  “Not exactly,” Guilty Jen said. “More like I agreed not to kill her on the spot because I figured she might be worth something to you. You want her back? It’s going to cost you.”

  Clara shook her head. If Guilty Jen turned her over to the warden now it would be all over—the warden would kill Clara immediately. If she could hold out for a few more hours, though, until Fetlock and his SWAT teams arrived, then maybe, just maybe, she would stand a chance.

  “You name your price, I’ll meet it.”

  “Simple. My set and I walk free out of here, no strings attached. You provide civvies for us to change into, and a car, and you never see any of us again.”

  “I doubt that, if you mean you won’t be coming right back here the next time a deal goes bad or you get bored enough to kill somebody. But I won’t be here then, so fine. Bring her down to—”

  Clara had been mouthing, No, no, and shaking her head enough to make Guilty Jen at least hesitate. “Hold on,” she said, and pressed mute. “You got something on your mind, Hsu?”

  Clara nodded. “Listen. She’s lying to you. She can’t guarantee anything that you want. She’s not in charge here anymore. It’s the vampire who’s running the show. If you turn me over now the warden will kill me. That will just infuriate Malvern. She’ll hunt all of you down just because you thwarted her plan. They know all about respect, too,” Clara said. It probably wasn’t true. Malvern was far too smart to waste time on petty debts—but Jen didn’t need to know that.

  “It means waiting until nightfall, right? The vampire’s in bed right now.”

  Clara glanced at the screen of the BlackBerry “It’s almost three now. That’s only a couple of hours. You give me to Malvern instead, and she will be very grateful. She’s the one who really wants Caxton, not the warden.”

  Guilty Jen thought about it for a second, then took the BlackBerry off mute. “Okay, Augie, we’ll bring her to wherever the vampire is at dusk. I’ll hand her over directly to the vampire. You have our stuff waiting.”

  “You’re making a mistake, Jen,” the warden said.

  “I don’t make mistakes. I make corpses,” Guilty Jen replied. “You want me to make one out of Hsu right now? ’Cause I will.” And then she ended the call.

  40.

  The sky overhead was blue, with only a few fat clouds scudding by high above. After the gloom and oppression of the prison’s interior Caxton’s eyes had trouble adjusting.

  Caxton climbed up onto the roof and held on to the edge of the skylight to keep from sliding off. The roof of the infirmary had a pitched, shingled roof that was far too sloped to allow her to stand up.

  She helped Gert up and clutched the back of her jumpsuit to keep her from falling. She pulled her makeshift rope up through the skylight and wrapped it around her waist inside her jumpsuit. You never knew when you might need a rope again. Then she craned her head around to look at the central command center, which sat atop the prison’s central tower like a UFO on a pedestal. Windows ran all the way around its circumference, and its roof was studded with searchlights, machine-gun nests, and communications antennae. She could see a little bit through the windows and it looked like there was no one inside.

  “We’ve caught a real break,” Caxton said. “Don’t look down.”

  Gert was looking at the edge of the roof, down below her dangling feet. If she slid it would be a long way to the ground. She probably wouldn’t die from falling twenty feet, but she would most likely break a leg or an arm. Caxton couldn’t afford to let either of them fall.

  “There’s nobody up in central command right now. I cut the power so they couldn’t watch us on the security cameras,” she explained. Gert hadn’t bothered to ask why Caxton had felt it necessary to blow up the powerhouse—she’d just assumed her celly knew what she was doing. “They have no idea where we are. And it looks like, without power to run the equipment up there, they didn’t think it was worth it to have anyone up there just staring out the windows. If they did, we’d already be in trouble.”

  “I think we’ve got plenty of trouble as it is,” Gert said. She sounded like she was breathing heavily. Caxton wondered if she had a fear of heights. If she did, this next part of the plan was going to be tough. The best way to make somebody afraid of heights, though, was to put them up on a roof and ask them if they were scared of falling off, so she kept the thought to herself.

  “We need to make our way over there,” Caxton said, tilting her head toward the central tower, “and then find a way in. It’ll be easy if we work together.”

  “You’re going to teach me how to fly?” Gert asked.

  “No. We’re going to walk. Two people can do that, but one can’t. So you have to do exactly what I say, alright?”

  “Sure.” Gert looked into Caxton’s face. There was something funny about her eyes. “You got it. I do what you say, and I don’t die. I like that part of the plan. The part where I don’t die.” She glanced down the slope of the roof again. “Can we just do it now, then? Just, like, right now?”

  “Sure,” Caxton said. “Don’t forget to breathe.”

  Gert nodded and took a few deep breaths. It seemed to calm her a little.

  “The roof is too steep to walk on, as you’ve already noticed,” Caxton said. “But if we stand on either side of the peak, we can counterbalance each other’s weight. You stand on that side, I’ll stand over here. We hold hands—hold on really tight—and neither of us will fall. If you let go—”

  “I won’t let go,” Gert assured her.

  “Good. It’s also important we walk at the same speed. So.” She held out her hand and Gert grabbed it. Careful not to overbalance, Caxton rose slowly to her feet and watched as Gert did the same. The grip on her hand quickly became painful, but Caxton ignored it as best she could. “Left foot forward.”

  Gert moved her foot carefully, her toes grabbing at the shingles. Caxton moved her own foot.

  “Right foot, now. Left.”

  “Hold on! Okay,” Gert said, having taken her first full step on the roof. She looked over at Caxton and started laughing. Laughing a little too much. “I got it. Left, now. Now. Right, now, left.”

  “Slow down, Gert,” Caxton said. “Let me catch up.”

  “This is easy!” Gert laughed again. “Left, uh, and—”

  Caxton’s right foot went out from under her. The shingles were old and weatherworn. One had crumbled underneath her. She fought to get her balance, hopping on her left foot as Gert dragged her forward.

  “Right! Left! Right, left, right! Woohoo! Left!”

  “Gert!” Caxton called, sliding along the shingles, her feet barely finding purchase. If she lost her grip with both feet at once they would both fall. “Gert, stop for a second. Gert!”

  But Gert was nearly running along the shingles, swinging her legs high. Her hand crushed Caxton’s in a grip that kept getting tighter and more painful.

  “Left, right, right! Ha ha, I tricked you on that one,” Gert said, hauling Caxton forward. Caxton started to scream—

  And then she stopped. They had reached the edge of the roof. Beyond was a five-foot drop to a flat concrete roof that covered a walkway leading into the central tower. Gert jumped down without a care in the world, letting go of Caxton’s hand.

  For a long, drawn-out second, Caxton was all hands and feet as she grabbed at the shingles, trying desperately to hold on. The shingles cracked and fell apart as her toes dug into them. Her fingers found exposed nails and clutched to them as handholds, but she was falling, she could feel herself slipping, it was a losing battle trying to—

  Gert grabbed her by one arm and one leg and hauled her down onto the flat roof of the walkway.

  “Now, that’s teamwork,” she said.

&
nbsp; Caxton rubbed at her arm where it had been dragged across the edge of the roof. Her hand was numb where Gert had been gripping it and her feet were raw and red. But she was alive and she had made it down from the roof.

  “Come on,” she said.

  Ahead of them, in the wall of the central tower, was a window looking into an empty room. There were no bars on it, though it was thicker than an ordinary window and not quite as shiny as glass. Caxton rapped it with her knuckles and listened to the sound it made. “Bulletproof. We’ll never break through,” she told Gert.

  “What?”

  Caxton stared at her celly Gert’s face was bright red, with sweat slicking down her temples and glistening on her chin. Her pupils were enormous, with only a tiny ring of brown showing around them.

  “What? No. Goddamn it, no. I did’t come all this way to—” Instead of finishing her sentence, Gert slammed her shoulder against the window, again and again.

  “Gert! Stop,” Caxton commanded.

  The girl stopped immediately. Then she dropped down to sit on the concrete and started chewing on her fingernails.

  “You took something,” Caxton said.

  “What?”

  Caxton grabbed Gert’s sweaty chin and pulled it up so they were looking at each other. “Back in the dispensary. You took something when I wasn’t looking. What was it?”

  “I don’t know whatcher talking about,” Gert slurred.

  Caxton groaned in frustration. She didn’t know whether to make Gert throw up or just let her burn it off on her own. Without knowing what kind of stimulant Gert had taken, there was no safe answer to that question.

  She would have to worry about it later. In the meantime she studied the window. It was fitted perfectly into its frame, which was set deeply into the brick wall of the tower. There was nothing to grab hold of, nothing she could bend or break. It was built in two sections, one of which was designed to slide over the other so it could be opened, and… and… the latch wasn’t locked.

  Caxton put both palms against the sliding section of the window and pushed. It opened almost effortlessly, sliding along a well-greased rail.

  She climbed inside, and dropped easily to the floor of the room. Gert followed a second later.

  41.

  Gert leaned up against the wall, next to the room’s only door, and stood there, giggling. She had her hunting knife in her hand, holding it tight until her knuckles turned white around its handle. “This is. This is. This is. It. Right?” she said, her breath whipsawing in and out of her lungs.

  “I ought to leave you right here,” Caxton said. “That was idiotic what you did. It could get both of us killed. I can’t believe you took drugs at a time like this.”

  “Keeps me. Keeps me. Keeps me.” Gert swallowed noisily. “Focused. Alert. Awake. You coming?”

  “Hold on,” Caxton had time to shout before Gert tore open the door and ran out into the hall. Cursing, she followed her celly her shotgun held in both hands so she could bring it around quickly when she needed it. She wanted to grab Gert, pull her back into the room, and beat some sense into her— make her understand the plan better before she went rushing into danger. But frankly, she seemed to have the plan down already.

  It was simple enough: kill anything that moves.

  They found their first half-dead at the end of a short corridor. It poked its head out of a door as if looking to see what was making all that noise. The answer was Gert, who roared as she stabbed and cut her way through the door, leaving the half-dead in pieces. On the other side of the door was a broad room filled with old ratty couches and darkened vending machines. A staff lounge for COs, perhaps, in better times. The only light came through the door behind the two women, but it was enough to show them the three half-deads crouched around a dead television monitor.

  “Get clear,” Caxton yelled, as she brought her shotgun around to blow away the one nearest to her. Gert ignored her and jumped onto the half-dead she’d been aiming at, grabbing its ear and yanking its head sideways to stab at its throat. The other two tried to scramble over the back of the couch, but Caxton was waiting for them. She knocked one’s face in with the butt of her shotgun, then brought the other one down with a shot to the back of its neck. The plastic bullet passed right through its throat and its head slumped over to the left, dangling by a few scraps of skin. It kept running. Caxton followed close on its heels and knocked it to the floor, then smashed in the back of its skull with one quick blow.

  There was a stairwell on the other side of the lounge. Gert was already racing down its steps, into deep gloom. Caxton followed more slowly, knowing that Gert could be rushing into certain death. Half-deads were cowardly and not very bright, but they were perfectly capable of setting cunning traps for the unwary.

  At the next landing down someone had left a votive candle burning to give a little bit of light. It showed Caxton a door leading into the second floor of the central tower. Gert slammed into the door with her shoulder hard enough to knock it off its hinges. She didn’t need to—it was unlocked, and it slapped open with a loud bang as Gert staggered out into a large open space.

  Caxton reloaded her shotgun as she ran after her celly knowing that if Gert’s drugged-up recklessness was going to get them killed, this was the precise moment when it would happen. The room behind the door would be full of half-deads, she thought. Or it would be booby-trapped. A net would fall down over them as they passed through the door, or who knew? Maybe someone had left land mines lying around. Caxton doubted that a modern prison would have many land mines in its inventory, but she wouldn’t put it past SCI-Marcy from what she’d seen so far. She expected to find machine-gun nests inside the big room, or lines of half-deads holding wicked carving knives, or even a cohort of live, human COs holding assault rifles, turned to Malvern’s cause through some trickery.

  The last thing she expected was to find the warden working at a desk, apparently all alone.

  “Gert, get back,” Caxton said, as Gert started rushing toward the older woman.

  Warden Bellows was sitting behind a massive desk that was bathed in yellow light. A generator sat on the floor behind her, chugging away and pouring black smoke up at the ceiling. The light came from a pair of portable metal stands holding miniature searchlights, both of which were focused directly on the desk. The warden’s face was only partly visible, only her mouth and her nose lit up enough to be recognizable. In the darkness beyond the reach of the light one of her eyes twinkled.

  Caxton couldn’t see much of the rest of the big room, but she had the impression it was full of cages, full of small prison cells made of nothing but bars and locks.

  The warden looked up and must have seen Caxton staring into the shadows. “This used to be the psychiatric ward,” Bellows said. “Now we use the cages as cooling-down rooms. When prisoners get too violent we bring them here and let them sit in a cage for a while. Never more than twenty-four hours. If they can’t calm down after that long, we move them to the SHU.”

  “I need guns,” Caxton said. There was no reason not to get to the point. She had her shotgun pointed at the warden’s head. The plastic bullet inside wouldn’t kill the woman—she was still alive, and therefore had more structural integrity than a half-dead—but it would make her very, very unhappy. “Real guns. Where’s the armory?”

  “Downstairs.” The warden picked up a piece of paper from her desk as if this were the kind of question she was asked every day. “You’ll have some trouble getting in, though. When the lights went out I sent most of my half-deads down there to wait for you. There was nothing for them to do up here, and I figured no matter what your next move might be you would have to go through the Hub.”

  “The Hub?” Gert asked. “What are you, what are—you talking—”

  The warden stared at Gert as if she were some kind of rare insect. Fascinating and repellent at the same time. “Uh-oh,” she said. “Someone’s been naughty. The Hub is where every long corridor in the prison comes togethe
r. It’s designed as a choke point. In case a riot breaks out in one dorm, we can lock down the Hub and it can’t spread to any other wing. Believe me, you won’t get through it.”

  “Even if I use you as a hostage?” Caxton asked.

  “That would be a good plan, normally. With Malvern in her coffin I’m in charge, and if I told the half-deads down there to back off, they would have to. You would march right through there, presumably with one arm around my neck, right? Then I could unlock the armory door for you, and you could go in and get all the guns you wanted. There’s a problem with that, however.”

  “Oh?” Caxton asked.

  “Yes. I’m not going to let you take me hostage.”

  Caxton steadied her grip on the shotgun and leaned forward into a firing stance.

  The warden leaned forward into the light. For the first time Caxton saw that one of her eyes was missing, a ragged hole in her face ringed with crusted blood. It wasn’t even covered by a bandage. “I’ve had one shit day,” the warden said. She pulled a pistol out of a drawer of her desk and before Caxton could shoot she brought it up to point at her own temple. “You give me a reason, any reason at all, and I’ll blow my own brains out,” she said.

  42.

  You’re bluffing,” Caxton said.

  “Am I? There’s one way to find out.” The warden fitted her finger through the trigger guard of her handgun. “I’m dead anyway. Maybe not today. Maybe not for years yet. But I have inoperable cancer. My one big chance was Malvern. She could make me immortal, she said. She promised. All it would cost me was a few of my prisoners’ lives, which was a price I was perfectly willing to pay. But it looks like she lied. It looks like she never intended to make me a vampire. When she wakes up tonight, she’ll probably kill me, and then bring me back as a half-dead. That’s almost worse than going out in a hospital bed with a drip in my arm. So I have no reason not to pull this trigger.”

  “You think I care?” Caxton asked, trying to keep her voice from breaking.