Outpost Season One

by Finnean Nilsen Projects

  But, Erin wondered, why was this exchange taking place at all? When Eddie “the Prince” had questioned Bowers, he had gotten a one way ticket to the chopping block. Mercedes was being openly disrespectful. Erin wondered how long this would go on before Bowers cracked.

  “No,” Bowers told her, “we’re not invading fucking Mexico.”

  “Warden wants to take us out of lock down,” Erin explained. “He had us in here earlier to discuss it.”

  “Us?”

  “Me and the Shot Callers.”

  “Why you?”

  “Because he needs someone outside the prisoner hierarchy as a go-between. To bring the prisoners issues to the Warden without having a full on democracy. The Shot Callers will control the population. The Warden will control the guards. I’ll be the guy in the middle, keeping everyone from killing each other.”

  Mercedes glared at him, and then nodded and said, “So, why am I here?”

  “You’re here,” Bowers told her, “because I need someone I can trust to do the same with the female prisoners.”

  He let that settle in a moment, then continued: “The women don’t have the same gang structure as the men, so I’ll need you to appoint women who can keep the peace. I’ll assign you a five guard security detail, as well, until everything’s settled. Any woman who causes a problem will be released, where she will be promptly dismembered by creepers.”

  “Creepers?” Mercedes asked.

  “That’s what the guards are calling the zombies,” Erin explained.

  Mercedes shook her head.

  “Now,” Bowers continued, “I’m going to have the men keep up maintenance. I want the women to take over administrative duties. Cooking. Cleaning. Laundry. Paperwork. All of that. Because of this, we will be having women moving through the male portions of the prison, and vice versa. That means you two will have to work together and communicate.”

  [TK: End of the world, but don’t forget to file you requisition request in triplicate.]

  This was sounding better to Erin every second. He was waiting for the catch.

  “The last thing I need,” Bowers said, “is to have some poor girl gang raped while she’s trying to take out the trash. So if anything like that happens – on either of your ends – I will hold you both personally responsible.”

  There it was.

  “Understood?”

  They nodded.

  “Good,” Bowers said, nodding too. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have other business to attend to. I trust you can find your way back to your cells.”

  [RL: This is a really key chapter, and one that we hoped communicated everything we wanted it to communicate, without actually saying any of it. A. a lot of what’s happening here isn’t key until later seasons. And B. the idea was to give the reader a glimpse into the varying relationships and emotions of the different characters. It’s important to note that every person in this room has some sort of history with the other two, but each varying by large degrees: The Warden has always used Erin as bait to sort out the troublemakers. Erin and Mercedes have their history of mixed emotions and growing infatuation. Mercedes and the Warden have their “work detail” history. With each trying to hold their hands close to their chests. This is why we wanted to write it from Erin’s perspective, because he’s always watching, calculating, searching for possible danger, checking people’s intentions. In this way, we (hopefully) were able to pick up on all the little intricacies that make up carefully shrouded internal conflicts.]

  Twenty-Four

  Marshall couldn’t believe his ears. It wasn’t just music, it was rock. Hard rock. Like riot music. And it was loud. Getting louder.

  The creeper that had once been his sister heard it too. Had adjusted course. Now traveling up the highway toward the sound. Stumbling along the center line.

  Marshall didn’t know what to do. His mind told him to get back in the bus and take off. His heart told him to ignore the music and shoot the creeper behind the ear. Humane as he could be. Put her down quick and painless. Yet another part of him said if there was music, there were people. And if there were more people, alive and well, there was hope.

  He pressed the service pistol back down in his holster and watched the road. There was a car on it now. Small but getting larger. Growing with the volume of the music. He couldn’t tell what make yet. It had something strange on the front of it.

  Yellow. With black lines running crooked across it.

  He squinted at it as it grew larger.

  Then in a blare of hard guitar, the car materialized fully on the highway. Swerved, clipped the creeper in the night gown, sending her careening off to the side as the V shaped plow struck her. Then blasted past and kept going. Marshall watched it until it disappeared around a bend and then shook his head. Not sure what had just happened.

  Got back in the bus and dropped it in drive.

  Twenty-Five

  Chris lay on the couch, the office dark as tar, listening to the voice speak. He tried to ignore it at first, but it was very persistent.

  And, it had started making sense.

  “I don’t get that last part,” Chris told the voice.

  It repeated itself. Calmly. Understanding. Comforting.

  “Really?” Chris asked. “How is that possible?”

  The voice explained it to him. How it had all been right there. In that report he read from the CDC. Chris tried to remember but couldn’t. His mind was too sluggish. If only he could sleep.

  The voice reminded him that sleep wasn’t what he needed. What he needed was to listen. The voice would help him. It was the only thing that really cared about him. And, of course, Chris thought, it would care about him. Without him, the voice wouldn’t exist.

  The voice told him they needed each other. Together, they could beat this. With the voice’s help, Chris was unstoppable. He could be anything he wanted to be. He could be the Warden. He could be above the Warden. He could be a god.

  Chris smiled. He liked the sound of that.

  The voice told him he could have anything he wanted. Anyone he wanted.

  Chris liked the sound of that, too.

  Just do what the voice tells you. Even when you don’t understand. Even when it sounds crazy. Even when it makes no sense. Just do it. And everything will be alright. Everything will be perfect. Everything will be the way it was always supposed to be.

  Chris nodded.

  “Whatever you say,” he told it.

  [TK: I love when they finally give into the madness.]

  [RL: Like I said (far more eloquently than Tom ever could) before, this is a much more intense chapter than Chris’ last because it’s almost entirely going on in his mind. There’s also the technique (which I love every time I see it) of third person dialogue explanation. Rather than saying: “The voice said, ‘You can have anything you want’” instead we use: “The voice told him he could have anything he wanted.” This is especially prevalent in thrillers and completely impossible to do in film. My favorite instance being: “What’s the plan?” Jack asked.

  John told him.

  “I don’t know if that will work.”

  And so you’ve switched from plain dialogue to third person explanation. It works better because the characters are allowed to communicate without the reader knowing what they’re saying.]

  Twenty-Six

  Mercedes walked behind Gibbs and off to his right. It wasn’t like she was worried about him: she just wanted him to know she didn’t trust him.

  They came to the first of many locks that led back to their respective cells, the guards exchanging glances at the pair. Didn’t open the lock.

  “Gibbs,” one of them said through the speakers. “Where’s your escort?”

  Erin shrugged. “Warden didn’t give us one.”

  [RL: This is an important moment that could easily be passed by without comment, but that’s why feel it’s so important to comment on it. Notice who the guard speaks to: Erin. Not Mercedes. Mercedes is ju
st the female guard Gibbs is walking with. This is the major difference between Erin and the other prisoners: the guards look at him differently. Any other prisoner strolls up to a minimum security lock, in Admin, without an escort, not in chains, and they’ll be getting their heads crushed without warning, if not killed. Gibbs walks up, and they say: “Gibbs, what are you doing walking around without an escort? You know that’s not how we do things in here, Big Guy.” It’s an immeasurable distinction, and one that explains in practice everything about why the Warden chose him.]

  The guards looked at each other again. The one who had spoken to Gibbs picked up the phone and punched an extension. Erin and Mercedes waited. The guard said something into the phone. Nodded. Hung it up and said, “Okay. Warden says you two will get clearance badges tomorrow. Until then, I’ll have Mystique escort you.”

  The lock opened and Mystique came out. Nodded to them, and started down the hall. Erin followed her. Mercedes followed him.

  “Strange stuff, huh?” Mystique asked over her shoulder. “If someone had told me two days ago you two would be allowed to just traipse around wherever you wanted, I would’ve fainted. But now, Warden says to let you two through, and I didn’t even bat an eyelash.”

  “The times they are a changing,” Erin told her.

  “So,” Mercedes asked, “we’re going to be able to go wherever we want? Just walk up to a lock and nod and you guys’ll open it?”

  “Pretty much,” Mystique told them. They stopped at a lock. Mystique waved. The gate opened. “But I don’t suggest you take advantage. The two of you aren’t going to be real popular with the guards. Every time you pass through a lock, instinct is to shoot you.”

  “Very comforting,” Erin said.

  “And I don’t guess the prisoners are going to be real impressed with you two having special privileges, either. You might want to spend the time in your cells tonight figuring out how you’re going to survive all of this.”

  They paused at a lock, and Mystique waved. The lock opened and a guard came out, his bald head shining under the halogens.

  “Gibbs,” he said to Erin.

  “Roc,” Erin returned.

  Mystique said, “Rococoa’ll take you back to your cell. I’ll escort Mercedes the rest of the way.”

  Erin nodded and followed the guard through the lock. Made a left. Mystique got moving again. Passed through the lock with Mercedes in tow and made a right. They walked in silence for a while.

  Then Mystique said, “Gibbs is cute.”

  Mercedes wanted to puke. Two days ago the prisoners were “animals,” now it looked like it would take everything the Warden had to keep Brennick from turning into an orgy.

  [RL: I just think this is the most natural thing in the world. You have damn near two thousand people spending every waking hour together – men and women – and the first thing you’re going to find once the shackles are pulled off is everyone starts to notice how much they want to fuck each other. Think about any company Christmas party, once the eggnog starts flowing…]

  [TK: Does anyone actually drink that shit? It’s the liquid version of a fruit cake.]

  [RL: I don’t know. Do they? I always assumed they did simply because it was alcoholic. I personally have drank from a bottle that had dirt and sticks in it and Thai writing on the label, simply because if it was from Thailand and had alcohol in it it had to be good. The sticks and dirt were just to make it better. And before you ask: I only puked until there was no bile left.]

  [TK: I drank shit in Korea I don’t even know what it was. They called it Black Death, it was in a bleach jug under the counter. It was like tar coming out of there. I told you about the Snake Shot, right?]

  [RL: No.]

  [TK: So there’s a bar called the Boogie House in South Korea. It’s the only place you can do the Snake Shot. What it is, literally, is a dead snake floating in an old Jack Daniels bottle. So they pour your shot, and then they pour you a half a glass of cheap Korean beer, and you take your shirt off and there’s a half blind, like seventy year old Korean woman, and she starts chanting “Drink Mother Fucker Drink Mother Fucker Drink” in a broken, horrible version of how we speak. So, once the bar knows what’s going on the whole bar starts chanting, so there’s no backing down. So then you slam the shot down and then pound down the beer because it tastes like someone shit in your mouth.

  And don’t ask me why I know what that tastes like.]

  [RL: And you pay to do this?]

  [TK: Yeah, it’s about eight bucks, but you get the Snake Shot shirt.]

  [RL: And how many of those do you own?]

  [TK: I actually have three.]

  Twenty-Seven

  Marshall pulled the bus into the loading bay. Put it in park. Shut the engine off. Opened the folding door, and got out.

  Brooks said, “Warden wants to see you and Bryce right away.”

  “Nice to see you too,” Marshall told him.

  “If you had gotten here on time you could’ve showered and shaved first like the rest of us. What’d you do, stop for snacks?”

  “Bryce’s fucking front tire blew,” Marshall huffed. “We had to fix it on the side of the highway. I was killing creepers with my bare hands! And I found my sister. That was fun.”

  “She with you?” Brooks asked, looking past Marshall at the stream of survivors coming out of the bus.

  “No,” Marshall told him. “She was a creeper.”

  “You kill her?”

  “No, she got hit by a car.”

  Brooks stared at him. Then said, “Where’s Bryce?”

  “He got hit by a bus.”

  Brooks stared at him again. Marshall shrugged. Brooks turned from him and said, “Get these people checked out. I want full cavity searches of everyone, even the kids. If anyone’s bit or shows any sign of being sick, send them right back out the way they came.”

  The guard he had instructed nodded.

  “Come on,” Brooks told Marshall. “We don’t want to keep the Warden waiting any longer than he already has.”

  [TK: The stranger things become, the less strange they seem. Guy’s sister gets hit by a car, no response. Guy gets hit by a bus, no response.]

  Twenty-Eight

  “Have a nice visit?” Tall Bill asked Erin as the door to their cell closed.

  “How’s that?”

  “You and your beautiful woman?”

  “How’d you know she was there?”

  “Jessie told me,” Bill said, and shrugged. Pointed over his shoulder. “She brought you back your bottle.”

  “Nice of her.” Erin went around him to the sink and took the bottle. Looked at the amber fluid inside. “Have a bit of a party?” he asked Bill.

  Bill shrugged again.

  Erin sighed. Opened the bottle and downed some. “It was interesting,” he told Bill. “Mercedes didn’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  “She didn’t know, because I didn’t tell her.”

  Bill nodded his understanding. “How’d she take it?”

  “Not well. I think she’s pissed at me.”

  “More than before?”

  “More than before.”

  [RL: How many hours ago did this girl actively try to assassinate him? And his first thought is: “I think she’s pissed at me.”

  “More than before?”

  “More than before.]]

  Bill nodded. “That sucks,” he said.

  Erin climbed into his bunk and laced his fingers behind his head. Thinking. Thinking about Mercedes. And Bowers. And that look in the Warden’s eyes. The history he read there. He thought about the knot in the pit of his stomach, and the quietly burning rage he held for the Warden. He thought about where this all was going, and what he would be able to do once he got that security pass. He thought about Blake, out there in the world alone. Possibly with his mother. Possibly not. Possibly dead.

  “Tomorrow,” he told Bill, “I get a security pass to go through any lock, anywhere in Brennick.”


  “Anywhere?”

  “I’m not playing repeater,” Erin told him.

  [TK: Shameless reference to one of the greatest movies ever made.]

  “Sorry,” Bill said. Erin couldn’t see his face, but knew he was smiling.

  “But, yes, anywhere.”

  “So, we just have to make it through the night. Snug as bugs in our cells here. And then tomorrow morning you get a hall pass. And we’re set.”

  Erin nodded. Shifted in his bunk. Said, “Just one more night.”

  [RL: Cue dark, brooding music.]

  Twenty-Nine

  Warden Bowers glared across the table at Marshall. The young man now the fifth guard to return alive to the prison. It wasn’t that Bowers had anything against the guy: he just couldn’t imagine what took him so long to return, or how he had done it without the sixth guard.

  “Where’s Bryce?” he asked Marshall.

  “There was an accident,” Marshall explained.

  “An accident?” Bowers asked, raising an eyebrow. “What kind of accident?”

  “The bus fell on him.”

  Bowers continued to glare.

  “He got a flat,” Marshall began, “and he had the bus jacked up. The jack slipped and it came down on top of him.”

  “Killing him?”

  Marshall squirmed a bit. “No, but he was screaming and it was attracting creepers…”

  “So?”

  “So, I killed him.”

  [TK: I guess Marshall doesn’t put friends and family in the same category, since he killed Bryce for screaming but he couldn’t put his sister down even after she’s turned.]

  [RL: Bryce was a direct threat. She was slowly moving towards them, blind in the light.]

  Bowers sighed and nodded. “I see,” he said.

  Warden Bowers was getting tired. He felt his age. Which meant he didn’t feel well. It was bad enough all this shit going on, but when the troops get back and can’t tell a fucking straight story to save their lives, it takes an even heavier toll. Now Bowers was ready to call it a night. Lock the door, pour himself a tall one of straight scotch, and have himself a good drunk.