And now this had to happen! A sleazeball rapist assaulting her while she could not move. What next?
In her current condition she could not fight back. Why couldn’t she move? What was wrong with her, she did not know. She knew only that she wanted to eat.
In pain, she felt him pushing into her between her legs.
She wanted to scream, I want to eat!
Instead, she lay rigid, her body tilted up at a slight angle as she tried to will herself to get out of bed, her mouth frozen open in silence, her screams echoing solely in the corridors of her mind.
Chapter 49
Bascomb felt better now. He had a spring to his steps and a glint to his eyes as he strutted out of his house under the late afternoon sky.
That was the beauty of being the Chosen One. He could have any woman he wanted.
Invigorated, he felt like he could run a mile.
Alcatraz might be a prison, but it was his prison. Nobody else but him owned it and ran it.
Life was good, he decided. The infected be damned.
A large white gull swooped down at him like it had been ripped from a cloud.
He smiled at the gull as it glided away westerly on jittery wings on a wind current.
Then he heard a distant rumbling above. Concern etched on his face, he peered up toward the east. As he had suspected, it was a Predator drone heading his way.
He could always count on the government to ruin his day. His mood soured.
It was only a matter of time before the drone started firing its Hellfire missiles at him, or even worse. He fully expected a drone to drop a nuclear bomb on Alcatraz one of these days. The smoke caused by the fires raging out of control in San Francisco was still interfering with the drone’s cameras, or the government would have detected him and his society by now.
The hazy sky was the only thing keeping him out of the bombsights of the drone, Bascomb figured. As long as the government didn’t tumble to his thriving society of uninfected humans on the island who got along fine without Washington’s help, the government’s honchos would not attack. Bascomb would do everything in his power to keep the wool pulled over the eyes of the government when it came to the existence of his island community. Yet he knew he could not keep it up forever. In the end, the government would find him out.
He felt a chill of dread run down his spine at the thought.
Watching the drone pass overhead, Bascomb decided it was high time he issued the order to his men to commence digging his bunker 24/7—even if it meant that nobody could sleep at night on account of the racket raised by the construction crew.
He had no time to waste. He could feel the government closing in on him even now. There was no way they would tolerate his survival as soon as they discovered how successful he was without them.
The government wasn’t patrolling the skies for allies. It was patrolling the skies for foes that it would atomize at the earliest opportunity.
As an attorney who used to practice in the Beltway, he knew the paranoid mindset of politicians. It wasn’t friendship they craved. It was power. They always had to be top dog, which meant a death sentence to any isolated pockets of humanity that they discovered could exist without their imprimatur.
Bascomb didn’t know how big the existing government was or where it was hiding. All he knew was that remnants of the USA’s federal power structure still existed. The presence of the drones proved that.
As long as any traces of the warp and woof of centralized federal government existed, nobody on this island, including him, was safe. He and the others here stood as living proof of the redundancy of whatever was left of the federal government, be it in the hallways of Washington or the bombproof bunkers of Virginia.
Bascomb could feel the hot breath of the government breathing down the nape of his neck and he wasn’t about to let them destroy him without a fight.
The fat was in the fire. He would increase the size of his construction crew immediately and order his laborers to work on his bunker around the clock. Everything else would take second place to completion of the bunker.
Yeah, he decided, leave it to the government to wreck his day.
Fixated on the government, he fell to brooding about his five visitors who had arrived out of nowhere on a sailboat. Could it be, he wondered, that they had been sent by the government to spy on him? Did the government, in fact, already suspect he and his community were living here on Alcatraz?
Perhaps his benign acceptance of the visitors’ presence had been too cursory. He was in the process of vetting them. He would soon uncover their true intent, as he had set wheels in motion that would sound the visitors out. He probably should have initiated his stratagem sooner.
Be that as it may, he didn’t see how the visitors could hurt him as long as they remained on the island, even if they were working for the government—unless they were somehow signaling the government about his presence on the island.
But cell phones weren’t working, he knew, because cell towers had been knocked out of commission by the fires burning out of control on the mainland.
Could one of the visitors possess a satellite phone? Bascomb wondered. He had not seen any of them using one. Besides, satphones were bulky and hard to hide. He would have noticed if any of the visitors had one.
You could never be too paranoid when the government was on your case. They possessed the resources that could jeopardize your existence.
Bascomb cursed and hammered his fist through the air. Everything had been fine until that damn drone had cropped up.
Chapter 50
Kobe Jones was walking down Broadway with Halverson. Their footsteps resounded throughout the capacious prison.
“I know how you feel,” said Jones under his breath.
“What do you mean?” asked Halverson.
He had no idea where Jones was coming from.
“About Bascomb,” answered Jones, continuing to keep his voice low. “You have doubts about his leadership. You probably think he’s in this for himself.”
Halverson did not know if he should confide in Jones. To all appearances Jones was Bascomb’s right-hand man. Could Jones possibly be as fed up with Bascomb as were Halverson and his group?
“His power here might be going to his head,” said Halverson, couching his words as speculation.
“Might be?” Jones’s face registered surprise. “It seems pretty obvious to me. The only one who’s benefiting here is Bascomb.”
“It seems that way.”
Was Jones trying to sound him out? wondered Halverson. Or was he on the level?
“He gets to live in a house and keeps all the good-looking foxes for himself,” said Jones. “Does that sound like a guy who puts the community’s interests above his own?”
“It doesn’t appear to,” said Halverson.
Halverson did not trust Jones and wasn’t going to go out on a limb revealing what he really thought of Bascomb.
Jones leaned toward Halverson conspiratorially. “Can I count on your company when I break out of here?”
Taken aback, Halverson answered, “This is news to me.”
“Hopefully, it’s news to everyone. You’re the first person I’ve told. I don’t trust anybody else in here. Bascomb has paid snitches all over the place.”
Jones’s eyes darted around the prison suspiciously.
“Why trust me?” asked Halverson.
“I heard what you said at the trial. You gotta want out of here as much as I do.”
“If we leave here, we have to contend with the ghouls surrounding us.”
“We have an armory in the prison. It’s chock-full of all sorts of guns and ammo. We’d make those sorry-ass infected pay big-time if they came after us.”
Halverson plumbed Jones’s droopy eyes to see where he was coming from. Halverson could not tell. Jones’s eyes were unfathomable.
As a secret agent trained by the CIA for the National Clandestine Service, Halverson trusted no one. Distr
ust had become second nature to him. Part of him wanted to believe Jones, but the trained professional in him distrusted Jones.
“Why me?” asked Halverson.
“You look like you can handle yourself. I need someone like you to have my back.”
“What about Reno? Can we take him with us?”
“Of course.”
Halverson could not rid himself of his doubts of Jones’s sincerity. “What’s your plan?”
Jones kept his voice so low Halverson could scarcely hear it. “We need to take out Bascomb.”
Jones’s words stunned Halverson. Jones must’ve really had it in for Bascomb, Halverson decided. Bascomb’s murder didn’t figure into any of Halverson’s plans for escape. Halverson saw no need for it.
“Is that necessary?” asked Halverson.
Again Jones’s all but imperceptible voice. “If we don’t whack him, he’ll hunt us down to the ends of the earth.”
“I don’t get it. Why?”
“He can’t tolerate anyone opposing his authority.”
“But if we’re not here on the island anymore, what difference does it make to him what we do?”
“The other people here will know that somebody opposed him and got away with it. Bascomb can’t let any kind of opposition exist on earth. He’s got to set an example of each and every rebel.”
“He sounds like he’s certifiable.”
Jones stopped walking and looked Halverson square in the eyes.
Halverson came to a halt as well and returned Jones’s stare.
“It doesn’t matter whether he is or he isn’t,” said Jones. “What matters is, he’s got to be taken out before we split. Or, like I said, he’ll hunt us down and kill us.”
At this point, Halverson didn’t know who was crazier. Bascomb or Jones. They both sounded paranoid. After all, why would Bascomb leave a good thing here at Alcatraz just to chase Halverson? Why go to all that trouble just to set an example of him? Was there no limit to Bascomb’s paranoia? Did it all boil down to survival of the most paranoid on this island?
Halverson remained wary of Jones. Jones’s answers weren’t scanning. On the other hand, Halverson wanted to know what Jones was up to. He wanted to know where this line of discussion was leading. He decided to play along with Jones and find out.
“OK,” said Halverson. “I’m in.”
Jones nodded expressionlessly and walked away.
Chapter 51
Halverson found himself standing in front of Reno’s cell. At least they had removed Reno’s handcuffs, Halverson could see.
“This is insane,” said Reno. “I told you we were better off among the ghouls.”
“Don’t worry,” said Halverson. “We’re gonna get you out of there.”
Reno tried to slide the closed cell door open. It was locked.
“How do you plan on busting me out of a jail cell?” he said. “They didn’t name this place ‘the Rock’ for nothing. It’s supposed to be escape proof.”
He grabbed the case-hardened steel bars on the door and tried to yank them sideways several times as if to demonstrate his point.
“Maybe I can find the key,” said Halverson. “I still have free rein of the place.”
“Lucky you.” Reno paced restlessly around his cramped cell.
“I’m not gonna let you rot in here.”
“We all need to break out. Take our boat and scram. The sooner the better.”
Halverson thought about his discussion with Kobe Jones. “I may’ve gotten help for us.”
“What do you mean?”
“A mole in Bascomb’s camp.”
Reno faced Halverson. “Can he get the key to my cell?”
“Maybe. I’ll see.”
“Are you sure you can trust this mole?”
Halverson did not mince words. “No.”
Reno screwed up his face. “I guess we don’t have much choice. It’s not like we have a lot of options.”
“He seems to hate Bascomb, though, even more than we do.”
“Impossible,” said Reno, scoping out the jail bars surrounding him.
Halverson scanned the proximate cells. “Have you seen any sign of Brittany?”
“No.”
“We need to know where everyone in our group is when we make our breakout.”
“The last I heard she was in Bascomb’s house.”
Halverson caught sight of Parnell and Victoria in their cells. “The only one missing from our group is Brittany.”
Depressed, Reno plunked down on his bunk and held his bowed head in his hands. “Everything’s going to hell.”
“So what else is new?”
Reno did a double take. “I thought I was the resident cynic.”
“I’m trying to see the glass as half-full, but it’s not working.”
Reno rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “If the plague doesn’t get us, Bascomb will.”
“We can’t give up. How much worse can it get?”
“Be careful what you ask for.”
“What we need now is a plan of escape.”
“Yeah. It’s only a maximum-security prison. A piece of cake.”
Aware that the CCTV camera in his cell was drawing a bead on him, Halverson kept his voice low. “As long as we’re not all locked up, we have a chance.”
Halverson heard a commotion up front. He slewed around to see what was happening.
Reno looked up, too.
A rent-a-cop with a cleft chin was shepherding a ghoul at the end of an animal grabber’s wooden haft through the main entrance into the cell house.
The fortyish male ghoul had a shock of tousled white wispy hair that needed a thorough washing. A pair of horn-rimmed glasses was sliding down the creature’s prominent beak, which was half-eaten away by decomposition.
A disheveled russet tie was lolling down the back of the ghoul’s white button-down shirt. Unkempt, wrinkled beige polyester trousers with inch-and-a-half cuffs completed the creature’s ratty wardrobe.
Fighting the animal grabber squeezed around its neck, the fortyish creature sneered and grimaced, exposing two rows of rotting, pus-slathered green teeth the color of pea soup. The creature bridled and was all but hissing as it grimaced, its withered upper lip curled upward.
When the ghoul had been human, perhaps he had been an elementary schoolteacher, decided Halverson. In the end, it made no difference. A schoolteacher ghoul was just as deadly as a physicist ghoul or a serial killer ghoul. A ghoul was a ghoul, regardless of its occupation in its prior life.
The guard herded the ghoul down the corridor out of sight.
Reno puckered his mouth in disdain. “Why do these people waste their time throwing the creatures in jail and trying them?”
“Maybe one reason Bascomb does it is to keep the residents entertained, to keep their minds off the lousy lives they lead here,” said Halverson.
“If you ask me, it’s not working.”
Looking distraught, a twentysomething female security guard with pierced nostrils strode down Broadway past Halverson. Her two slender silver nose rings no bigger than Cheerios, one in each nostril, glinted in the prison’s harsh fluorescent light. Her short brown hair sported green-tinted highlights.
Halverson could tell she was part of the security detail because of the 9 mm Sig Sauer semiautomatic holstered at the waist of her jeans.
“Have you seen our leader?” she asked.
“He’s not my leader,” retorted Reno.
“He’ll throw you under the bus if he hears you talking like that.”
“We haven’t seen him,” answered Halverson. “What’s going on?”
“The infected are doing something on the shoreline,” she said.
“We already heard they were massing there.”
“They’re not only massing there, they’re doing something else.”
“Doing what?” asked Reno.
“We can’t tell. They seem worked up over something.”
The security guard hu
stled past them, casting around for Bascomb.
Halverson turned to Reno. “What could they be doing?”
“Who knows?” said Reno. “Hopefully, they’re eating each other.”
Halverson shook his head. “They don’t have a taste for stiffs.”
“Well, maybe they’ve developed one.”
Chapter 52
Trembling with fever and chills, Brittany felt like she was going to croak. Her sinuses were on fire. In fact, her whole head was on fire.
She could hardly budge. It was like she had been run over by an eighteen-wheeler.
With superhuman effort she contrived to slip out of her bed in Bascomb’s bedroom and crawl to the nearest corner.
Hugging her knees she huddled into a ball. The only thing she wanted to do was eat. She was convinced if she ate a king-size slab of raw bloody steak she would feel better.
Shivering, she realized she was buck naked. Not that it mattered. The only thing that mattered was eating.
She did not want to die. She had been walking this planet for a measly nineteen years. It was like she hadn’t even begun to taste life, and now it was being robbed from her before she even knew what it was all about. Cut down in the prime of her life. It wasn’t fair!
But whoever said life was fair? You lived, you died. What did fairness have to do with being alive?
Maybe she wasn’t going to die, she decided in a moment of hopefulness. Maybe she would survive this malaise, or whatever it was, like she had survived mono two years ago. Indeed, she had felt like she was going to die back then, too.
All she needed was a fresh steak bathed in blood in her mouth and she would feel better. She knew it.
But then again doubt plagued her mind. Maybe she was grasping at straws. Maybe this really was the end.
She couldn’t stand the idea of her life being over. She hurriedly thought about something else. In her mind’s eye she pictured the juicy raw steak dripping thick red blood. The Technicolor mental image got her heart pounding with anticipation.
Braced after a fashion, she almost felt like she could stand up. But she couldn’t. Her legs quivered like jelly underneath her and she could not move them.
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