Blood Cell

by Shaun Tennant

  “What kind?”

  “Bad.”

  “Be specific Mr. Quinn. I don’t care if your actions were illegal or immoral, I just want to know.”

  “I’ve been, well... I have a problem inmate. A gang leader. He wanted to push me around, get me to cough up another gang member so he can take revenge.”

  “And you obliged.”

  “How did— yes. But I heard today that things were getting out of hand, a lot of talk overheard about killing this man, from many different sources.”

  “Killing him in a way other than the one you approved?”

  “That’s a goddamned way of putting it. Just who the hell—“ Negrescu raised his finger again, and two seconds later the waitress emerged with a bottle and two glasses.

  “Gentlemen, the manager sends his regards. He had to go into his private cellar for this bottle.” She uncorked the wine and gave the cork to Negrescu, before setting the bottle down to breathe.

  “Thank you, my dear.” The pale man looked her over, and she calmly waited while he did so. Once he finished looking her up and down, she left for the kitchen once more.

  “Lovely girl. Maurice, I want your story and then you will hear mine. Continue.”

  “I wanted to get my guards to clamp down on this situation. But I couldn't get my shift leader on radio. So I sent my secretary to find him.” Quinn paused, but the man had nothing to say, so he continued. “A couple minutes later the lockdown kicked in. It’s a last resort in the event of a riot. The inmates in that pod, we call the sections pods, apparently took over and locked it down themselves, in order to buy more time for their fortifications.”

  “So the prisoners completely control their part of the building?”

  “Yes. After the lockdown I called the Special Response Team, you know, the SWAT team? But there was a big drug bust or something, they were a couple hours away, and then this storm. My guys and the OPP tried a breach, but none of it worked. Couple hours ago about half of the SRT showed up, with some hand-held battering rams, stuff like that. We still couldn’t get inside the pod. Every door, even the one to the yard, was heavily barricaded.”

  “Is it common, in this area, to have such problems with police?”

  “You mean the SRT? Out here it’s two hours drive to get anywhere, so I’m not surprised. Just shit timing.”

  “Can you see inside? Cameras?”

  “Gone.”

  “Windows?”

  “They covered all windows with blankets.”

  “So your assault failed completely.”

  “Yes. The inmates still have control.”

  “And then what?” The man’s tone was calm, unchanging. He could have been asking for the time.

  “The Premier called and told me I had to come here to meet you.”

  “And here we are.”

  “So you want to tell me why?”

  “After the food gets here.” Negrescu picked up his napkin and tucked into his shirt, creating a bib. Just as he did, the waitressed emerged with two plates.

  “This didn’t take too long, since you ordered it blue.” She set the plates down and walked away with a wink to Negrescu. The steak was brown on top, but it was over an inch thick and the sides were still bleeding viscous, red blood. The pale man picked up his utensils and started to eat.

  “Do you believe in punishing the guilty, Mr. Quinn?” He spoke with bloody meat in his mouth.

  “Of course.”

  “You believe that a man should not get away with murder.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “An eye for an eye? Do you believe that a killer should be put to death, or that he should be given a life where he is cared for and given food and shelter without having to work for it?”

  “We don’t have the death penalty here.”

  “That’s not what I asked.” He took another bite, blood ran down his chin. He dabbed at it with the napkin. “Do you believe in punishing the wicked? Yes or no?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can get you your prison back.”

  “How?”

  “Yes or no?”

  Quinn nodded “Yes. I believe in punishment that fits the crime.”

  The Romanian man smiled and sawed off another piece of flesh to eat. “Good. I’ll get your prison back for you, then.”

  “How?”

  “Easy. I’ll go inside and kill them all.”

  “You can’t be serious.” Quinn looked around, hoping that someone else had overheard. No one had noticed.

  “Killers must be killed. It is God’s way. You tried to be humane and they murdered your guards. The humane way failed. Now is time for the inhumane way.”

  “You expect me to just take you there and let you in? Walk you past all the police and the news crews and find some way to slip you into a heavily fortified pod that even the SRT couldn’t breach? So you can live out some Rambo fantasy?”

  “Of course not, Mr. Quinn. I expect you to stay here and drink your soup. I only need one thing from you.”

  “And what’s that?” Negrescu looked Quinn in the eyes again, with that unnerving and penetrating stare. Without moving his gaze, Negrescu lifted the bottle and poured the crimson wine into his glass.

  “I need you to invite me in.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  John Norris was conscious again. He was tied to a table’s bench, flat on his back, with his face throbbing and his ribs aching. ‘I might have broken ribs,’ he thought. He grimaced and found that moving his face made the pain much worse. ‘And my nose is definitely broken.’ He laid on the steel bench with his arms tucked under it, cuffed together. His ankles were also cuffed together below the bench, the steel digging painfully into his leg. On the opposite bench, Metcalf was tied down in the same manner. He wasn’t moving and his eyes were closed. Norris couldn’t tell if he was breathing.

  Turning his head, Norris couldn’t see much around him. He was in the mess hall, down among the animals, and there were sounds of people moving about. He could still smell though his bloody nose, and picked up a strong odour. The room smelled like a combination gun range and butcher shop.

  Norris craned his head to look around. The place was destroyed. Most of the tables were gone and there were several dead bodies lying on the floor. There were also a few bloody streaks along the concrete, all heading out to the secure hallway. ‘That’s where they’re stacking the bodies.’ He also saw that there were flashlights on in the darkened kitchen. Only the guard stations had flashlights. Now the inmates had them, which meant they had everything, maybe even more guns. Definitely batons, pepper spray, and tasers.

  The inmates were searching the kitchen, probably taking an inventory to see how long they could hold out in here.

  A hand smacked him in the face, open-palmed. His swollen face screamed in pain, but Norris himself didn’t make a sound. It was Santos Vega, looking down on him with a smug grin. “We gotcha now, Norris. You and your buddy Metcalf. And the others, too.”

  “I don’t care how many hostages you have. You’re going to spend the rest of your life—“ Vega slapped him hard again, then raised his other hand into Norris’s view. He was holding a walkie.

  “You get that?” Vega asked the walkie. “John Norris, alive and well. You want to keep him that way you won’t try to get in here again until we let you come in.” He switched off the walkie. “Thanks, Norris. I needed somebody to prove that I didn’t you kill ya’ll. Yet. You boys are gonna buy some new rules around here.”

  Norris laughed at the idea of anyone actually following Vega’s orders, but the gang leader didn’t hit him again. Instead, Santos leaned in to whisper “You killed a couple of people with your rifle fire. Including one of the dirtbags. You better pray that I see fit to protect you, or else Ox Werden will skin you alive.” And then he walked away, leaving Norris to worry about his ribs, his lungs, and his life.

  *****

  Metcalf woke to the sound of Vega slapping Norris. At first, he was so
dazed that the pain didn’t register. As the clouds covering his consciousness faded away, the pain was revealed to him. Agonizing, brutal pain—ranging from throbbing in his face to a bright, pulsing, stabbing alarm in his left leg. His leg was broken, shattered, when he was pulled down from the balcony. It was also wrenched awkwardly underneath him, secured to his other leg with handcuffs that weren’t big enough for his ankles. The steel had already chewed through his skin on both legs, and his slight movements made it worse. His hands were hanging underneath him, cuffed together below the bench. The bench itself was far too small for Matcalf’s hulking frame, too narrow for his shoulders.

  Vega threatened Norris and walked away. Metcalf lifted his head to watch Vega, forcing his chin into his chest in order to see. There seemed to be some kind of a work crew in the no-longer-secure guards’ hallway. They were looking at a barricade. But nobody was building, at least nobody that could be seen through the propped-open double doors. They were just looking. Metcalf could smell the explosives, and realized that they were seeing if their barricades had stood up well against the SRT’s attempt to enter the pod.

  Obviously, the SRT had failed to get in at least once already, and the inmates were making sure they were still secure, locked willingly into the same place that so many of them would kill to escape from.

  And then, a bird chirped. Not a bird. That would be very out of place inside of a prison cafeteria. A whistle. A well-practiced bird call. Metcalf turned his head around, searching the room as well as he could without looking like he was searching the room. Then he spotted Matt Williams peeking in from the main entrance. Matt Williams, birdwatcher. Williams made eye contact with Metcalf, then turned to someone out of sight.

  Metcalf turned to Norris. He made a pssst sound and Norris lolled his head over to look at him. Metcalf nodded toward Williams, flicking his eyes to emphasis the “look over there” in his gesture. Norris turned to see that the doorway was now empty. A moment later, a couple of inmates strutted into the mess hall.

  Norris looked at Metcalf, his expression asking what Metcalf was pointing to. Metcalf mouthed the name “Williams.” Norris turned again, and this time Williams was visible again, crouched low and barely peeking into the mess hall. Norris shifted uncomfortably, thrusting out his arms beneath him, trying to show Williams his handcuffed wrists. It didn’t occur to Norris that Williams would have already noticed their bindings and figured out that it was handcuffs.

  Williams turned suddenly, the unseen person said something, and Williams slipped back out of the doorway. A moment later, Eli Castillo walked through the doorway. “Hey Santos,” he called out, and that was all he said before Matt Williams and good ol’ Danny Lewis jumped in behind him and put a gun to his head. Williams had the gun, a sidearm, and Lewis quickly forced Eli’s hands back behind his head, then twisted them to his lower back and cuffed them there. The three of them walked, carefully, toward Metcalf and Norris’s table.

  For a moment it seemed like Williams and Lewis would be able to just walk right in and take the other guards uncontested. They reached the table, and Lewis kneeled down to start uncuffing the hostages. He got Norris’s hands free before Vega came into the room.

  Vega screamed for his men, then he screamed for them to bring the guns, and in moments every doorway into the cafeteria was filled with men, each of them seeing Williams and Lewis as new toys to abuse. Williams levelled his gun against Eli’s head. Vega waved for the other inmates to stay still, and somehow they all listened.

  “This is a straight exchange,” Williams said. “We take our guys up to the office and lock the door behind us, and you get your best buddy back.”

  “Williams, there’s no play here. We all know you don’t have the balls to kill anyone, and if you did it would only mean you die too.” Santos was very calm, almost emotionless. Metcalf figured he’d been in these circumstances before, and seemed to have a switch he could flip to stop valuing human life.

  “You all think I’m the nice guy, the guard who doesn’t have the balls to be a hardass. Well trust me, I’ve got a god damn survival instinct.” Williams’s voice sounded confident, but Metcalf was only a few feet away, and he could see Williams’ leg shaking, his nerves getting to him. “I know you, Santos. Eli is your best friend on this Earth. You want me to kill him?”

  Vega turned his head, then titled it back and around, cracking his neck loudly enough that Metcalf could hear it from thirty feet away. “So you got big balls,” he said to Williams. “But you don’t have the high ground. See, if you kill Eli, you got no leverage. But if I start killing your guys, I still got three more to kill. See?”

  “Keep going,” Williams told Lewis, “uncuff his ankles.” Lewis moved down to Norris’s legs.

  Metcalf heard the bullet strike the steel bench about two inches below and away from his ear, just off his shoulder. The bullet shattered, and flakes of shrapnel dug into his neck and shoulder. Only after did he hear the gunshot—the sound travelled to his ear slower than the bullet did.

  He wailed in pain and craned his head to see the prisoner on the balcony, aiming a rifle directly into his eyes.

  And then it all went to Hell. The rifleman fired again, this time at Lewis. Lewis took the bullet in the side of his face, a small spray of blood and bone ejecting from an exit wound on the far side of his head. Norris, who was loose now, jumped up and started sprinting for the main doors, away from Vega and most of the prisoners, but toward the man the with rifle. He dragged a set of handcuffs from one ankle and one wrist. Eli threw his shoulder into Williams, who was a little dazed by the double-whammy of Lewis dying and Norris trying to save himself. Williams fell against the table, turning, and opened fire. Metcalf heard the shots , but the tabletop blocked his view. A moment later, he saw Eli fall to the floor, several shots in his chest. The inmates standing with Vega raised whatever guns they had, Metcalf thought they might have four long guns, and started to fire at both Williams and Norris. Three inmates standing in the doorway in front of Norris were hit in the crossfire and Santos screamed for them to stop, grabbing a gun out of one man’s hand and taking it for himself.

  Williams rolled off the table to the far side, away from Santos and closest to Metcalf’s head. The shots from Santos’ group seemed to have stopped, but a bullet bounced off the table.

  “Sniper!” Metcalf screamed at him.

  “What?”

  “Sniper!”

  Williams clued in and turned to face the man on the balcony. Metcalf couldn’t see it, but both men lined each other up and fired. A shot struck Metcalf in his already-damaged left leg, the last shot the man with the rifle would ever fire.

  With Williams huddling behind him, Metcalf lost sight of the third guard. “Where is Norris?” He asked Williams.

  “Fighting” came the response. And that was what John Norris was doing. He was throwing his fists and his feet, and swinging the steel handcuffs, at many of the ten-or-so men who blocked the main entrance. Many of these men were either shot or shocked that the man next to them was shot, so Norris was actually making ground.

  Santos Vega and his group advanced on the table. Another ten men came from the kitchen, and Metcalf realized as the men flowed into the room that the odds were something like 40 to one. And he was still tied to the table, his leg was both broken and shot, and arms his still immobilized.

  And then somebody screamed. Not a wail of pain from a fight or a bullet wound, or even a rage-filled battle cry. This was an almost inhuman, primal scream. The sort of wail a wounded animal might make as a lion started to eat it alive. It was instinctual, painful, it was the kind of sound that curdles your stomach and makes your skin tighten. It was at the back of Santos’ group—someone still in the secure hallway by the barricade. The scream stopped everyone. For a moment, nobody turned to see who was screaming. Nobody wanted to be the first, nobody wanted to expose their eyes to the thing that made that sound. But the screaming continued, ending only when punctuated by a wet tearing sound like
a dog ripping into raw meat.

  A man’s body flew from the back of the group, over the mob, over Santos, and landed with a hard thunk on the steel table where Metcalf was cuffed. Its momentum carried it off the table, over Williams, and to the floor below. It was Eddie Angel, a lifer. His guts were on the outside of his tattered torso, and the side of his neck flapped open like a jewellery box. He may have still been alive, for the first few seconds.

  His scream finished echoing around the expansive room, before everyone else screamed too.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Around the time that Santos called everyone to come into the mess hall and bring the guns, Eddie Angel was just checking to see if the weight machine cables were still holding the barricade together. The cables were taut and the steel tables seemed to be in good shape, even after the guards’ attempt at ramming their way in. Everyone turned to follow Santos (as they always did,) but Eddie was on his back underneath a steel table bench and wasn’t about to get up just because Santos had decided to play the boss again. Plus Eddie didn't have one of the guns anyway.

  There were several large dents in table closest to the doors. Disturbingly, there seemed to be smoke leaking in from around the table. It might have been a sign of an explosive charge being used, but he hadn’t heard an explosion. Was it teargas? The wall of tables was three-deep, so crawling all the way back to the doors was difficult, but not impossible for a small guy like Eddie. He decided to worm his way down there and see how much damage had been done, and figure out the source of the smoke.

  Behind him as he crawled, Eddie heard Santos posturing, some bullshit about having big balls. There was a lot of smoke. It seemed to be growing, like the smoke was expanding rather than dissipating. It was getting thicker and was really flooding the gaps between the table legs and attached benches. Strangely, there was no smell in the smoke. As it wafted over Eddie and started to engulf him, it did not carry the scent of burning or the feeling of teargas. It was just a sort of dense, empty vapour. A fog.