He sloshed down the last of his beer, turned to the bartender and ordered another. The bartender winked at him. "Might want to double up, Jimmy. Time for last call."
"Damn," said Atkins, squinting at his watch. "Already? Hell, I was just gettin' started. Ain't that a bitch? Yeah, gimme two for the road an' I'll head out."
He leered at the waitress again as she walked by with a tray full of drinks. He wouldn't mind taking a bite out of that apple. Might even do her some good. It did all kinds of good for that convict's whore. It must have, for all the fussing and fighting she did.
Draining half the mug in one gulp, he thought back to that night. How slick you feelin’ now, foxy lady? Was it worth crossing Jimmy Atkins? Hell, he'd tried to be nice. But she didn't want to be nice, so he had to do it the hard way. If she had any sense she'd have played ball with him, maybe even gotten her dumb-ass husband out of prison early. Jimmy could be a body's best friend or worst enemy. All they had to do was play ball. Wasn't all that hard to figure out.
He emptied the rest of his mug with one hand, then picked up the other and downed it in two gulps. After wiping his mouth with the back of his fist he dropped a ten-dollar bill on the bar, got up and left.
Outside it was a warm autumn night. He liked the glow he had, and for the moment all was well in his world. He looked toward the distant end of the parking lot where his pick-up was parked. It was a pain in the ass having to leave it so far away, but that 4x4 was his baby. He didn't want some shit-for-brains drunk to hit it or open a door against it. He'd have to hurt 'em then, and he was getting too old for that shit. Better to leave it parked off by itself.
Fishing in his pocket, he pulled out his keys and began the trek to his vehicle. He found the challenge of trying to walk a straight line from the bar to the truck amusing; it was one of those little challenges that made life interesting.
He was about to place the key in the lock when a horribly powerful arm locked around his throat and yanked him from his feet. An instant later a fist dug into his ribcage with such force that it winded him and watered his eyes. In the midst of his pain and confusion he felt another hand snatch a handful of his hair and yank his head back, nearly snapping his neck. Before he could react a soft white cloth soaked with chloroform was pressed hard across his nose and mouth, forcing him to inhale it.
That, combined with the fourteen beers he had drunk, rendered Jimmy Atkins unconscious in a matter of seconds.
***********
Herbert Billings stared wearily at the road ahead. As usual, it had been a stressful evening at his mother's. It always was. Even though he was fifty years old, she still treated him like a little boy. As a result the weekly Saturday evening dinner dates with her had become predictably trying. If she wasn't badgering him about getting promoted within the prison system, she was haranguing him about not being married and having grandchildren for her to spoil. If not that, it was something else. She was still in her early seventies and the thought of enduring another ten or twenty years of this was depressing. Realizing he had said the same thing ten years earlier without having done anything about it was even more depressing. More and more he had come to despise being the ‘dutiful son’.
He flipped on the high beams as he prepared to drive the final quarter mile to his home. It was thickly wooded and he had often encountered deer on this stretch of road. Now, at one o'clock in the morning he had no desire to pry one of the beastly creatures from the hood of his car.
As he pulled into the driveway he automatically reached for the garage door opener. After pressing the button he watched the door swing upward, allowing him to enter the house without having to exit his car. It was a safety feature he greatly appreciated.
Inside, he killed the lights, shut off the motor and got out of the car. Stretching languidly, he reached for the inside switch that would close the garage door, sealing him safely away from the outside world. But his finger never reached the button. Instead, two heavyset men stormed into the garage from the darkness beyond, one of them carrying a pistol, the other a soft white cloth. Momentarily immobilized by their unexpected intrusion, Billings watched in horror as they closed on him before he could react. A moment later the soft white cloth was pressed firmly over his face.
Within seconds, Billings was unconscious and the two men with him - after securing the garage - were carrying him off to a waiting car.
********
The first sensation Billings felt was confusion. His mind was blank and his memory befuddled. The second sensation was paralysis. He discovered that when he tried to move his hands and feet, they refused. His third sensation was revulsion from the horrid stench that assaulted his nostrils. He hadn't experienced it before, and found it unnerving in a way he couldn't define. It smelled like a combination of chemicals, raw meat, and blood. The second time he inhaled he had to fight off the urge to vomit. It was then that he experienced the fourth sensation: abject terror.
As bile welled up in his throat, he realized he couldn't open his mouth because it had been heavily taped. At the same instant he also realized his hands and feet wouldn't move because they too, had been taped. It was then that the memories from his garage came rushing back in bold relief.
Startled, his body convulsed and his eyes opened wide. What he then saw was a scene worse than his wildest nightmare. It was the inert form of Jimmy Atkins, himself bound hand and foot, and a thick strip of duct tape had been pasted across his mouth.
Unlike himself, however, Atkins was unconscious, perhaps even dead. Moreover, standing beside Atkins was one of the biggest, most malevolent, heinous looking human sub-species he'd ever seen. The man was wearing a rubber apron, knee-high rubber boots, rubber gloves, all of which were covered with freshly smeared blood. Panic stricken, Billings looked at his surroundings. He and Atkins had been propped up against a pair of stainless steel bins. Beside them was a long wooden walkway. At the end of the walk Billings could see an overhead conveyor belt with heavy hooks on it. Only when he noticed that several of the hooks had what appeared to be sides of beef on them did he come to suspect the nature of his surroundings. He was in a slaughterhouse, or meat processing plant. He could only guess why he'd been brought there...or by whom.
His heavyset captor noticed that he was conscious and grunted. Rising slowly, he approached Billings, bent down, and tore the tape from over his mouth.
Billings' voice was laced with fear. "What are you doing? Why have you brought me here? You can’t do this! I'm an employee of the United States Government!"
"Oh yeah?" asked the man. "No wonder I feel safe at night." His tone was so empty, so dispassionate and soulless as to be death-like. Although forty years old, Henry Pappas had changed little since boyhood. He'd never warmed to other two-legged creatures, and had been a loner all his life. It was as though the instincts for socializing or a place to fit in had been left behind in his mother's womb, and hadn’t entered the world with him. If a job needed to be done, he did it; if a place needed to be visited he went there. Otherwise Henry Pappas walked the face of the planet, but was never a part of what went on here.
Except for times like this; this was a place he went, and this was a thing he did.
"I demand to know why I'm here!" said Billings, his voice nearly shrill.
"Hey Squeaky, shut the fuck up or I'll put the tape back over your mouth."
"But you don't understand. I--"
"No, you don't understand. This ain't the penitentiary. You're in our house now, and what you say don't mean shit around here."
Billings' pulse jumped twenty beats. He had blown his load in three squirts and this man didn't seem to care. Who was he?
A second man rounded the end of the walkway, still wearing the same casual street clothes he had worn when Billings had been abducted. Despite his respectable appearance, he had the same death-like eyes as the other man, and was every bit as intimidating as his accomplice. Like Henry Pappas, he was over six feet tall, over two hundred pounds, was mildly
hunch backed, and appeared to have the charm and personality of a piranha. Billings perceived him as being in charge, and therefore looked to him with renewed hope.
"Please tell me what's going on here!" Billings begged. “You're not going to harm me are you?"
The man - thirty-six year old Everett Parker - looked as though Billings' question had wounded him. "Harm ya? Whatta you mean? Who’d want to hurt a cute little guy like you?"
Billings didn't know what to think. The penitentiary had been his domain for more than twenty years. He’d grown accustomed to power and having his way, and had come to wear authority like a robe. Other than visiting his mother, he’d forgotten what a subservient role was like.
"Why have you kidnapped us?" he asked again. "And why have you brought us here?"
"Oh, that," Parker said, dismissing it with the wave of his club-like hand. "Don't worry, you and your butt-buddy are gonna be just fine."
Parker reached into his pocket and took out a capsule two inches long. Stooping over, he removed the tape from Atkins' mouth, snapped the capsule in half and held it under his nose. Atkins made a face, and then sputtered before opening his eyes.
"What the..." he asked, trying to get a bearing on his surroundings. He was still struggling with the combined effects of the chloroform and the alcohol.
After a moment he realized his predicament, and suddenly became afraid. "What the hell's going on here? Who the hell are you, and how come me an' Herb are all tied up like this?"
"A guy with a lot of questions," mused Parker. "The two of you are amazing."
"Then tell us what's going on here, ya dumb shit," demanded Atkins, wincing momentarily as his head pounded.
Henry Pappas wiped his bloodstained hands on his rubber apron and looked down at Atkins. "You should learn to respect your superiors."
“Superiors, shit!" spat Atkins. "The day a dumbass like you is my superior, I'll eat shit an' bark at the moon!"
Angered, Henry Pappas rubbed his chin with the back of his fist. "No, see. Actually you're the dumbass. Take a look at who's playing what role here, then tell me who’s holding the aces." With that, he drew back his right foot and drove it hard into Atkins' ribs. Atkins let out an agonized groan and curled up in a ball.
Pappas backed away from Atkins, and looked down at him in disgust. "It ain't hard to tell you're a jailer," he said. "You don't know how to act right even when your life's on the line."
"Life?" blurted Billings, his heart in his throat. "What are you talking about?"
"Pal, this ain’t Disney World here. This is the end of the line. You haven't figured that out yet?"
"No!" wailed Billings. "You can't do this!"
"Yes we can," answered Parker.
"But why?" asked Billings. "What have we done?"
Billings was beginning to sob and Parker found it pathetic. "You and your friend here played a dangerous game; you could have hurt the wrong people. You pissed them off and you have to pay the price. That's the way it is. We couldn't change this even if we wanted. Know what I mean?"
"Hey," said Atkins, fighting the pain in his ribs, "we didn't know what we were getting into. We didn't mean for nothin' like this to happen. Give us a break fellas."
"We're gonna," answered Pappas, in that lifeless, tombstone tone of his. "Just like the ones you been giving all the guys over in the joint."
"Come on!" screamed Atkins, himself now terrified. "This wasn't supposed to happen!"
"Should have thought about that a long time ago," said Pappas, as he slapped a fresh piece of duct tape over Atkins' mouth. He plastered another piece on Billings, who now began kicking and screaming hysterically.
Together Henry Pappas and Everett Parker grabbed Billings and Atkins under the arms and dragged them to the end of the walkway. There they released them, stretching them out on the floor. Billings and Atkins then watched in horror as Henry Pappas pressed a button on a control panel. Immediately, the overhead conveyor belt containing the meat hooks started moving, and large slabs of meat began moving toward them. As each slab reached them, Pappas and Parker hoisted them off the hooks and dropped them down a stainless steel chute, after which they were lost from view. They continued on like that until about forty of them had been tossed below, after which Henry Pappas hit the switch and halted the conveyor belt.
Wiping his brow, the hulking Pappas turned to Billings and Atkins. "You’re probably wondering what we're doing, and what all this has to do with you. Right? Well, I’ll explain it to you. This here is a meat processing plant and a cannery where we process horses into dog food. What I've been dropping down the chute are horse rumps...you know, horses' asses. Of course, I'm sure a couple of horses’ asses like you already know that. Right? And now that you've seen what happened to these horses asses, you probably already know what's gonna happen to you, too."
Billings and Atkins recoiled violently. Even with the tape over their mouths they managed to scream. Billings' eyes were bulging as though he was being tortured with a cattle prod, and Atkins' neck and cheeks were red and swollen beyond all reason.
Stunted, lumbering Everett Parker stepped forward and extended his hand as though suddenly endowed with new understanding.
"Wait a minute, Henry," he said, reassuringly. "I think I know what they’re worried about, so let me put them at ease.” To Billings and Atkins, he said, “You thought were we gonna put you down the chute and chop you up into dog food, and you’d have to experience the whole thing? Nah, you don't have to worry about that. You're not going to feel anything. We'll give you some more of this stuff, and you'll never know the difference. Here, let me show you what I mean."
He reached in his pocket and produced one of the soft white cloths, then saturated it with chloroform. As he approached, Billings shrieked, and then tossed and turned wildly. Abruptly, he became rigid, then fell limp. Finding this odd, Parker reached down and checked his pulse. A moment later he stood up and shook his head.
"Gees, I thought maybe we lost him for a minute there. Thought maybe he had a heart attack or something. Wouldn't wanna cheat him outa getting to Ride the Wild Slide! But he'll be with us long enough to experience the adventure."
Turning to Jimmy Atkins, he said, "You gonna have a heart attack too, or would you like some more of this shit?"
Atkins began kicking and thrashing so wildly that he broke the tape that had been restraining his legs. As a result both Pappas and Parker rushed him, held him down, and administered a fresh dose of chloroform. A moment later Atkins was almost unconscious and on his way down the chute, followed closely by Billings.
Henry Pappas reached up and pressed another button on the control panel. Several machines came to life, one of which was the conveyor belt that began moving Billings, Atkins, and the forty horse rumps along the conveyor belt below.
As Everett Parker watched them proceed, something occurred to him. "You own a dog, Henry?"
"Yeah, two of 'em. Why?"
"I wouldn't be feeding 'em this brand for a while. Might not agree with ‘em."
Pappas broke into a rare laugh. "By the time the equipment gets done with 'em no one’ll be able to tell the horses from the asses, not even the dogs. But you're probably right, I'll feed 'em dry food for a while."
After a pause, he added, "We're done here. The machines'll do the rest. Come on downstairs, I'll buy you a cup of coffee."
Chapter Thirty-Two
Adrian paced nervously, partly to burn off excess energy, and partly because sitting down might wrinkle his best pair of khakis. His hair was neatly combed, his face shaved, and his nails had been cleaned and clipped. His shoes gleamed with a shine that would have made a drill sergeant proud. This was the closest he had felt to the real world since coming to prison two years earlier. It was his biggest day since going behind the walls, and was for a lot of other men, too. It was the day the Parole Board hearings would convene.
Appointments had been scheduled every fifteen minutes. It seemed an insultingly short time in whi
ch to determine a man's future, but lots of things behind the walls were insulting. The hearings had fallen behind schedule, and the lobby outside the law library was crowded with men silently contemplating their chances. He'd use the extra time trying to guess what would be asked, based on what he'd been told by men who had already been there. He had read Billings' recommendation a half dozen times, and wondered how much difference it would actually make. He couldn't erase the feeling that maybe it would be a gaff; maybe Billings had played him again.
The library door opened and a middle-aged, matronly-looking woman emerged with a folder in her hand. Her expression was dour, in keeping with her ultra-conservative, navy-blue suit. One glance, and Adrian hoped she didn't have kids. Parole for them would have meant running away from home.
She glanced at the folder, and addressed the men in the lobby, "Adrian Cabraal."
Adrian raised his hand. "Right here."
“You're next. Please come in."
He followed her into the library, which had been rearranged for the hearings. All furniture had been set against the wall, with the exception of a six-foot conference table and a folding chair directly in front of it. Adrian stood next to it, but didn't sit down until instructed to do so.
The board consisted of three people -- the woman who had summoned him, a middle-aged man with receding hair and a plain brown suit, and a man of about thirty whose boyish, collegiate appearance made him look out of place.
"Mr. Cabraal," began the middle-aged man, "we're here to determine whether you are an appropriate candidate for an early release from this institution. Being eligible for parole doesn't necessarily mean you'll obtain one. Do you understand that?"
"Yes, I do."
"Very well then, we'll proceed. Do you know what a Salient Factor is?"
Rules of the Game Page 25
