Blood Cell

by Shaun Tennant

  Eddie started to get nervous about going deeper into this rapidly thickening fog. He decided to go back, crawling in reverse to get out from under the barricade. The fog started to prickle at him. It was just a tingle at first, but then he knew that somehow, this fog was physically picking away at him. It wasn’t chemical, otherwise he’d feel the prickling everywhere. It felt more like crawling through a thorny bush. He started to panic, and pushed off from the ground hard, trying to crawl faster but only hitting his head off a table. One of the invisible thorns picked at his hand. He held it up, almost losing sight of it in the darkness and the fog, but could see that his hand was pouring blood. The blood ran down the back of his hand and off between his thumb and forefinger, then disappeared into the fog.

  Eddie became convinced, somehow, that his blood was not reaching the floor. The fog was consuming it as it fell.

  Another thorn prickled him, but this time was worse. It wasn’t a thorny bush. It was a bite. In this tiny space with dozens of guys maybe ten feet away, something had bitten him.

  Eddie reached the end of the last table. He backed his rear end out from under the bench and scrambled to get the rest of his body free as well. He wanted to get everyone else to look but they seemed to be fighting or something and Eddie was hypnotized by the sight before him. So he stood, awed, at the sight. In this dark corner of the prison, lit only by distant emergency lights, the unnatural fog was actually twisting, like a snake, through the many table legs and cables of the barricade. And then it all poured out, all at once, condensing together, getting darker and darker until it was completely opaque, then completely solid. It was a shape, cylindrical, a little wider than Eddie and a lot taller. The shape still moved like smoke, but it didn’t blow away or dissipate, it coalesced. Eddie was looking at a miniature tornado without any wind.

  The fog was a man. A pale man in black clothing. He was formed from the fog, or maybe it was more accurate to say that the fog had carried him. Perhaps the fog was the medium that carried such men through impossibly tight spaces.

  The man opened his eyes—the colour of smoke, or of the moon. And he opened his mouth, a shark’s mouth—no—a wolf’s mouth, and shaped it into a vicious, gleeful grin as the fog shaped his claws.

  Eddie Angel screamed. It was a sound he had never made before, a sound he normally would have doubted that a person could make. The Fog Man was solid now. He took one step forward and punched his right hand into Eddie’s stomach. His hand went inside Eddie. He stepped closer again, and with Eddie’s guts in his tightening fist, the Fog Man smiled that spiteful grin even wider. He might have even been quietly chuckling to himself as his other hand grabbed Eddie by the neck so hard that the claws sunk into his flesh. Eddie kept screaming. The animal thing that was killing him—he knew that was what was happening—stepped close and stuck its nose to Eddie’s neck. It breathed him in. Eddie was going numb now, not really holding himself up anymore, but felt the hot wet blood on his neck run upward against gravity for just a second, and even with his senses fading Eddie knew that this Thing had licked his neck.

  The hand in his belly grabbed his intestines hard and pulled outward, and then without letting go, the Thing spun Eddie around and hurled him, like a discus, out into the crowded mess hall. Eddie felt himself hit the table, then the floor. He looked up to see a couple of guards, and then his eyes stopped sending signals and his brain stopped receiving them.

  *****

  Santos Vega saw the body hit the table in front of him and then everybody scattered. His people started screaming in fear or pain, and they slammed into Santos, almost knocking him down in a stampede to get away from the hallway doors. He had to fight just to turn around and see what was happening.

  A man, a white man in a black suit (was it a suit?) was attacking the inmates. Not attacking. Killing. One at a time, two at a time, he was ending lives with every movement he made. With a hundred inmates scrambling around the cafeteria, this thing that looked like a man was shooting fish in a barrel. It grabbed Jackie the Joker by the face with one hand, and ripped his Adam’s apple out with the other. It slammed Pete Vignaut’s head into the wall so hard that the cinderblocks broke. The fucking thing moved so fast that Santos knew, instinctually in that gut feeling he got sometimes, that this creature was not a man. It was something much worse. Some guys were trying to fight it, but Santos knew better.

  Santos spotted Charlie and Carlos running along the east wall, away from whatever that thing was. He ran to join them. The creature was moving quickly through the room, zig-zagging wherever it saw a kill. It was coming, in a general sense, toward Charlie and Carlos. Santos screamed for them to run. Carlos heard him, and he reached back to grab Charlie’s hand, like an older brother, and pull Charlie through the crowd.

  The thing was getting close to them now, and it set its cold, almost colourless eyes on them. Santos remembered the handgun he was holding and raised it toward the creature. He fired, not caring about the other prisoners running by. The thing was hit on the shoulder. But didn’t register any pain. It was more like someone had tapped it on the shoulder. ‘Hello, could you look over here please?’ The creature noticed Santos for the first time, and recognized him as that man with the gun. He fired again and again, not stopping this time until the clip was empty. He was sure he had hit the target with every shot, but the thing was unmoved. It stepped toward Santos, once slowly, and then broke into a run. It moved like a cheetah, sizing up the prey and then attacking. Or maybe more like a wolf.

  “Fucking RUN!” Santos screamed at Carlos. The thing seemed to realize that Santos was trying to save somebody else. It turned to look at Charlie and Carlos, still holding hands and running toward the main exit. The man in black smiled, showing a mouth with nothing but incisors, and it turned away from Santos to resume the chase after Charlie and Carlos. It needed only seconds to close the gap, and it was on them. The creature leapt, hooking its fingers into the bottom of the balcony fifteen feet from the ground, and swung the other hand at its victims. Charlie and Carlos ducked, and tumbled to the ground. The man in black dropped between. He licked his lips, looking back and forth between them. He could have been doing a silent eeny-meenie-miney-moe. Charlie silently, stealthily slipped a shank from his pocket, and lunged at the man, aiming for the artery on the back of his thigh. The rough blade sunk in a few inches. This seemed to make up the creature’s mind, and turned his attention to Charlie. Whatever it/he was, it was fast. He grabbed Charlie’s arm and broke it while the shank was still in his leg. Charlie wailed.

  The creature then reached down one hand, with claws that Santos only now detected, which were so long he wondered how he hadn’t noticed them before. It grabbed the side of Charlie’s head, with the thumb claw resting on his eyelid. The thing looked at Santos as it squeezed, sinking its claw through Charlie’s eye, and then continuing until its thumb disappeared up to the second knuckle inside Charlie’s socket.

  “Don’t you want to save your friend?” asked the thing in black. It had a powerful, yet oddly exotic voice. It wasn’t really an accent, more of a strange way of speaking the language. Speaking English through vocal cords that were more attuned for howling at the moon.

  Santos had no response. The thing lifted Charlie, with that one hand, by the head. It raised Charlie to its mouth, and it took a large, deep bite at his throat. It kept its jaws clenched and yanked away, rending a piece of Charlie away from the neck. Blood squirted for four feet, then stopped, then squirted again. Charlie’s heart was still beating.

  Santos and Carlos both ran for the door when the thing holding Charlie started to chew. It did not pursue them. Instead, it chased down stragglers until there were another twenty dead bodies on the floor of the mess hall. When there was no one left to run away, nobody to chase, the man in black walked over to the steel picnic table that sat about thirty feet from the place where it had come in. It looked down at the uniformed man who was shackled to the bench with his hands behind his back, and it laughed. Metcalf
closed his eyes, squeezing out tears as he did so.

  Santos and Carlos were sprinting through the cell block.

  “What they fuck is that thing?” Santos asked as they ran.

  “I don’t know,” Carlos gasped, “but when you shot it, the bullets didn’t miss. They went right through.”

  Then the sound of that hateful, insane laughter caught up to them. It echoed through the prison, the sound of the laughter reaching every man, and the lone woman, in C Pod.

  *****

  Virginia Elliot was normally based out of the border town of Sault Ste. Marie, but the news of a maximum security prison losing control in a riot had lured her several hours from the border. A reporter in this part of the world covers anything that hits her desk, and a story like this could mean the difference between a big city job and another year in the sticks.

  Virginia was young and ambitious, and she knew that putting in her time editing a small-time paper was a nice step to a staff position at a larger paper. All she needed now was a story that would get national coverage and she’d be made. This could be that story.

  She was surprised that there were three different TV networks covering the Pittman situation when she arrived, about nine o’clock. She’d expected to arrive much earlier, but the weather had gone insane somewhere along the way. None of the networks were broadcasting live, and the storm had them all confined to their vans. As far as she could tell, Virginia was the only print reporter at the scene. That was good. If she was the only one with this story in print, her story could get republished nationally, with the U.S. media likely to link to her website.

  Working out of the Soo, she’d realized almost immediately that most of her stories were about traffic accidents. Accordingly, she’d acquired a police scanner in order to get the scoop. She had it with her now, and flipped it on. The chatter she heard was shocking, but seemingly unconnected to the prison. Someone had been killed in the nearest town. Maybe one of the inmates had gotten out? Made it to town? She wrote the victim’s name down. There was too much chatter over the air for this to just be a normal homicide, because it was policy in such cases to be discreet. The cops on this radio were anything but. She might have thought that these small town cops were just bad at their job—but the reporter in her hoped that the cops freaking out over the scanner meant something big. What the hell was going on?

  After taking some notes, she turned the scanner down and listened to the rush of the storm. Lightning flashed constantly and the wind was making it rain sideways. On the way up here, two roads had been washed out, and the storm had not let up for hours.

  She wasn’t getting out of her car any time soon, so she looked up the data on Pittman she’d copied onto her phone. Most of it was boilerplate Department of Corrections stuff. Then she saw the warden’s name. She looked to her notes—the name of the man who had been murdered in town.

  Maurice Quinn.

  The prison warden was dead in town.

  Someone had cut his head off.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  When Josh Farewell heard the keys jingling in Terminal Thomas’ cell, he noticed a feeling he hadn’t felt very often in the last few years. It was a strange combination of a tingling at the base of his spine and butterflies in his stomach. The last time he’d felt it was during his most recent escape. It was a feeling he had once known on a daily basis.

  Five years earlier, Josh walked up to the front door of a sprawling ranch-style house in Montana. The house sat on a half-acre of prime land, but the grass was brown and the house was getting worn out. One window had shutters, the others did not. The siding was stained and in a few sections it was missing. There were some new boards in the deck, but they had not been painted to match the old. The place showed that perfect combination—nice enough that the owners had money, decrepit enough that the owners were getting old.

  Inside, at a beaten old kitchen table that would probably be worth something at an antique store after its owners kicked the bucket, Josh sipped iced tea with the Prices, a retired couple nearing eighty years of age.

  “Mr. Giles,” said Mr. Price, “We already got insurance, and to be honest I think anyone offering life insurance to old folks like us has almost got to be a scam.”

  “Well I agree, Mr. Price. But I’m not selling health insurance, life insurance, or even home insurance. My company offers those programs, but to be blunt, sir, you’re too old to get life insurance from a company like mine. What I offer is widowing insurance.”

  “Excuse me?” said Mrs. Price, who had short curly hair and glasses as big as a welding mask.

  “You won’t get life insurance from us because the big-wigs would say you’re going to die too soon for the company to earn any money. Let’s be honest,” Josh said, putting down his glass and touching the old woman’s hand, “we all know how insurance companies work. But what I’m here about today is just the opposite, it’s not about hoping you won’t die, or your husband won’t die. It’s about knowing that death is inevitable, especially at your ages.” Josh pulled himself back, becoming a little more serious to address the husband. “Odds are, Mr. Price, you’ll go first. And our company wants to be there to make sure your wife is looked after. The way it works is that you’ll pay into a monthly plan just like your existing insurance, just a small monthly fee. I’m telling you now, this is not a reasonable price, a sensible price, or a decent price. It’s a low price, tiny really. This is, after all, supplementary. And in the event that one of you passes on, the other will stop paying us and start receiving monthly payments that will help out with the upkeep of the house or the groceries or whatnot.

  Josh looked the man in his eyes. “The point, sir, is make sure your wife is able to continue living in the manner she’s accustomed to.”

  “Well, son, if we pay you and then you pay it back, I don’t see how the insurance company makes any money.”

  “We don’t like to open with it, but essentially we make a profit if both of you were to die at the same time. Or if the survivor were to pass within the next year. We pay widows and widowers, but not to your children, you see. Like I said, this isn’t life insurance, it’s...”

  “Widow insurance.” Mrs. Price finished the sentence exactly like the previous wives had. Josh really liked that trick about trailing off. He stayed silent, letting Mrs. Price look into her husband’s eyes.

  This is when Josh got that familiar feeling, of nerves and excitement all at once. The feeling like things were somehow going to work out—so long as things didn’t fall apart first. Josh had a name for that feeling. It was called “I’ll go get my chequebook.”

  Five years later, Josh was in the solitary wing of a maximum security prison, trying to get a key ring from the very large man who held it.

  “Thomas, I really need to open one of these other cells.”

  “Why?” Thomas asked, not angry but curious.

  “There’s a riot and I need a place to hide.”

  “Why, you yellow or something?”

  Josh needed to get that key, and it seemed there would only be one way to make Thomas Turned trust him. “Thomas, what are you in for?”

  “Murder. And I hurt a lot of guys like you since I’ve been here.”

  Josh suspected that Thomas was just trying to bait him, or test him. He ignored the implied threat and kept pushing for the sale.

  “Did you ever hurt any women, Thomas?”

  Terminal Thomas stammered a little, and even though it wasn't really possible to see such a dark man redden, certainly in the shade, Josh got the feeling that Thomas was blushing. “I like women. I only beat on punks who think they can play me and get away with it.”

  Josh swallowed, then shrugged. Thomas’ answer, terrifying though it was, was acceptable. “OK, you just stay there a second.”

  Josh hurried back to the hallway, where Sally was still hiding on the other side of the doors, dressed in her ridiculous inmate costume. “I need you to come with me.”

  “Is it safe?
” she asked. Jesus, thought Josh, she’s really freaked out.

  “It’s fine,” he said in his most practiced reassuring tone, “but you need to stay quiet or somebody might hear you from one of the cells.”

  Josh grabbed Sally’s hand, and her soft fingers gripped him tightly as he led her, quietly, to Thomas’s cell.

  “Thomas, this is the person who I need to hide.”

  Josh pulled on Sally’s hand, pulling her into view of the hulking black silhouette on the other side of the door. Thomas gasped, breathing in a hoarse, almost giddy breath. Josh stepped up close to the opening in the door, raising a finger to his mouth.

  “I need to hide her here,” he whispered “because we both know what those guys would do to a woman in here.”

  Thomas nodded, “Okay,” and with a jingle, thrust the key ring out for Josh to take.

  “Thank you, Thomas.”

  Josh took the key ring and guided Sally to the nearest cell on the left. He made sure to leave the flaps on Thomas’ door open so he could see out, even though in the darkness of the emergency lights, there was nothing to see.

  Josh looked at the keys. They weren’t labelled. He picked one and tried the door. No good. He tried a few more, to the same end.

  “Let me try,” said Sally. Josh handed her the keys and took a step back. Sally was more frantic, working the keys faster than Josh. Her hands were steady as she slid each key into the lock, but they always shook when she had to select the next key on the ring. She tried another key.

  “You hear that?” She asked Josh. “I think the officers are back.”

  Josh hadn’t heard anything, but he jogged over to the main entrance anyway and had a look down the corridor. The sound of gunshots echoed down from the mess hall, but there was no sign of the guards.