Levi was used to such callous treatment. When he had arrived at the Florence State Prison in 2012 as a three-time loser, he had been shoved into a cage and quickly forgotten. Living among thieves, murderers, rapists, gang bangers, and drug dealers, he had become as hard and as unyielding as the concrete surrounding him and as sharp as the razor wire running atop the walls. He had fought with guards and with fellow inmates, but mostly he had fought with himself. One thing only had saved him from descending into the dark pit of oblivion – the wild mustangs.
Training and caring for the wild mustangs the Bureau of Land Management brought to the prison had kept him sane. Breaking and riding the feral horses, even in the small dirt enclosure allotted to them, had given him his only taste of freedom, his only contact with a living creature pure and unsullied by man’s dark desires or his need to screw over one another. Now, the mustangs were gone, released when the Staggers hit the state. The authorities had seen to the freedom of the animals but kept the cons inside to die.
Levi didn’t know what the Staggers were, nor did he care. Rumors flew in a prison like toilet paper in a riot. Everyone had his tale to tell. All he knew was that people became sick, died, and came back to life. At first, they stumbled around like drunks, thus the name Staggers, but as time passed, they became fast, deadly killers consuming human flesh. The infirmary was full of the dead and the dying and only one overworked doctor remained on duty. Sick cons remained where they were, and the harried doctor came cell-to-cell checking on them when he could.
The first casualty Levi had witnessed in Unit 8 was Big Moose Callahan in for rape and murder. He fell ill and died within six days, hacking up his lungs like a TB patient. Before they could remove the body, Moose came back to life, attacked a guard, and ate his face. After that, all hell broke loose. The sick were separated from the healthy. Every cough sent men scurrying in the other direction.
Of the almost 4,000 convicts in the Florence State Prison, fewer than three hundred remained. The cons near the end of their sentences, or those deemed safe for early release, had been freed a few months earlier, leaving only the hardcore criminals. Since then, Levi had been attacked twice. He bore a livid scar on this right side where a shiv made from a toothbrush had almost punctured a kidney. The doctor had stopped the bleeding, stitched the wound, and returned him to lockup. Now, he carried a weapon of his own, a sharpened piece of copper tubing ripped from one of the bathroom sinks. Only one person had threatened him since, and his body had been burned with the Stagger victims.
A pall of black smoke, reeking of scorched flesh and gasoline, billowed around his face. He brushed back his long red hair and coughed. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he told Ax.
Ax rolled his eyes. “Sure. Why don’t you just ask a bull for the key?” he said, hitching his thumb at the retreating guard.
Ax’s sarcasm annoyed Levi, but he let it slide. “I have a better idea,” he said, his blue eyes twinkling.
Ax stared at him. “What?”
Levi shook his head. The best secret was the one only one person knew. “I’ll show you tonight in the cafeteria.”
He paced his small cell the remainder of the afternoon. The door wasn’t locked. He could have walked the length of the entire cell block if he wished, or wandered onto the yard. The remaining cons could now come and go as they pleased within the confines of the prison, but few chose that option. The guards were trigger happy, and one stumble could turn a fall into death sentence. One cough could invite a bullet to the head. Having a barred metal door to shut if someone turned zombie was another reason most remained indoors.
That evening, in the much shorter than usual chow line, Levi took his place behind a con named McHugh, a great hulk of a man with a nasty disposition and a reputation for hurting people for pleasure. He didn’t like McHugh, and McHugh didn’t like anyone. He was taking a chance getting so near the quick-tempered con, but tonight the risk was worth it. As they shuffled down the food line, McHugh loaded his tray with double helpings of everything, growling his displeasure at the hapless servers who cowered from him. Levi placed nothing on his tray. His stomach still reeled from the stench of the dead. He remained close behind McHugh, following him down the serving line. As they neared a table, Levi raised his empty tray, slammed the corner of it into the back of McHugh’s head with all his might, and then shoved the stunned man forward into the space between tables. McHugh, dazed by the unexpected blow, dropped his heaping tray of food and stumbled around groaning, banging into tables and reaching out blindly to maintain his balance.
“Staggerer!” Levi shouted at the top of his lungs and pointed at McHugh.
Other frightened voices immediately took up the yell. Cons scattered like frightened children as the guards closed in, shoving their way through the throng like bulldozers, swinging wooden truncheons at random heads too slow to move out of their way. Levi grabbed a confused Ax by the arm and yanked him along; joining one group huddled near the kitchen door. McHugh recovered enough sense to realize what had happened. He searched the room for his attacker. As his gaze fell on Levi, he raised his hand, pointed, and growled in rage. As he did, his head exploded, disintegrating from a flurry of bullets from frightened guards standing on walkways above the mess hall floor. Brains and blood sprayed the floor, the tables, plates of abandoned food, and the nearby cons. Men panicked. A melee ensued, as men scurried away from the gore, afraid the disease was spread by blood.
Mouthing a silent thanks to McHugh for his unintended aid, Levi and Ax eased through the kitchen door unnoticed. The cooks and cook’s helpers were staring at the turmoil on the floor and paid little attention to them, as they slipped into one of the trash bins.
They waited for hours in the filthy bin, buried beneath scraps of food, potato peelings, and empty cans. The smell was nauseating, but not as bad as the burning bodies. Eventually, as Levi knew they would, the workers rolled the full trash bins to the incinerator room where trash was ground into small bits before being burned. As he hoped, with the shortage of guards, they were allowing the trash to build up before separating the recyclables from the burnable trash, if they still bothered with such petty details in a world no longer concerned with environmental issues. After the workers hauling the trash and the single guard accompanying them left, he and Ax slipped out of the bins.
Covered in food scraps, Ax looked around the room, his hands on his hips. “What now?” he asked.
Levi brushed a dried crust of mashed potatoes from his shirt and pointed up at the smokestack rising from the incinerator dominating the center of the room. A conveyor belt ran across the room, ending in the massive jaws of the grinder, last step before the incinerator. When active, the incinerator burned trash at temperatures of over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. A series of recovery systems trapped and scrubbed harmful flue gases of their toxic chemicals. The system rarely worked as efficiently as the EPA required, but it was easier to pay the fines than to repair the unit. One benefit of the system was that the waste heat provided hot water for the showers. Now, it was silent.
“We climb out there,” he said.
“Are you crazy?” Ax replied. “We’ll fry.”
Levi smiled. “Relax. The incinerator is off. We can stand a little heat. There’s a maintenance ladder inside. Once we’re outside, another ladder will take us back down to the roof. From there, it’s a hop, skip, and a jump over the wall.”
Ax eyed the incinerator with trepidation. “What if they decide to start it up?”
He chuckled. “Then, my friend, we die a horrible death.”
After using a metal rod to pry open the small maintenance door used to remove ash from the incinerator, and wriggling his way through the tiny opening, Levi stood inside the narrow chimney and stared at the small circle of moonlight above him. It represented freedom. Ax, groaning and bitching, forced his bulk through the small opening and stood inside the smokestack.
“Christ Almighty, it’s hot in here,” he said, wiping sweat from his b
row with his hand.
“And you say you’re from Arizona,” Levi chided.
The heat from the idle burners was stifling, not hot enough to kill, but enough to discourage them from spending any more time inside than necessary. He didn’t see the need to inform Ax that he had tripped a sensor when he had opened the incinerator door. It was unlikely any guards were monitoring the trash room, but if so, they would likely be shot dead before they made it to the wall. Once outside the walls and a decent distance away, they would be safe. Too many cons had died during the plague for the guards to expend time and energy chasing down and re-capturing escapees.
He climbed up the narrow ladder first with Ax following closely behind him. The rungs were hot, but his hands had become tough from roping and breaking wild mustangs. The heat didn’t bother him. It was barely as hot as Yuma on a midsummer’s day. He closed his eyes as he climbed and imagined the feel of cool free air on his face. However, Ax had been an accountant before accidently killing his client during an argument over dubious money movements. His hands were soft as a baby’s ass.
Ax seemed a strange companion for a prison break. He had no skills. He was lousy in a fight. Levi had taken pity on him one day when two cons started shoving him around. He had given Howard the nickname ‘Ax’ to make him at least sound tougher than he was. He wasn’t a friend. Levi had no friends. The only thing Ax could offer Levi was the ability to watch his back after they escaped. He couldn’t stay awake twenty-four hours a day and he didn’t want to wake up with a Staggerer munching on his leg. There was no one else in the prison he could trust not to slit his throat in his sleep.
Ax’s constant stream of complaints as they climbed grated on Levi’s nerves. “Shut the hell up,” he finally shouted down to his reluctant companion, “and climb.”
At the top of the smokestack, he peered over the edge. Only two of the guard towers were manned full time, both at opposite ends of the yard, the reason he had chosen this particular spot to make his escape. The tower nearest them was manned only occasionally. He couldn’t see anyone in it, but no lights didn’t mean no guard. The searchlights from the other two towers swept the walls at roughly five minute intervals, just long enough to climb the wall and get over the top. If the dark tower was manned, or if they took too long to scale the wall, they would be shot. It was a risk he was willing to take. Remaining inside was quickly becoming a death sentence.
They descended the smokestack to the roof, lay flat while the searchlights passed over them, and then shimmied down a drainpipe to the ground. Moving in the shadows as much as possible, they made their way to a small metal tool shed near the east wall. The shed was locked, but that didn’t matter to Levi. He had made other arrangements.
“How are we going to get over the wall?” Ax asked. His gaze followed the twin searchlight beams as they swept along the walls and the courtyard.
Levi had meticulously planned his escape. To answer his companion’s question, he produced a length of old fire hose from beneath a pile of depleted fire extinguishers awaiting refills. A two-barb hook he had fashioned from copper pipe had been shoved down the mouth of the nozzle to make a crude grappling hook.
“With this. I made sure I was on the fire extinguisher detail. We hook the wire on the wall and climb up.”
“We’ll be cut to shreds,” Ax moaned. “Besides, the wire’s electrified.”
Levi grinned and pulled a roll of copper wire from his pants pocket. Tied in a loop at one end serving as weight were several half-inch steel nuts he had been surreptitiously removing from the garage for weeks. He threw back a dusty tarp to reveal a rolled up and discarded bunk mattress. He had spent three weeks stealing small snips of copper wire and secreting the other items near the shed. All he had needed to set his plan in motion was help from the hapless McHugh.
“We short out the fence and lay the mattress over the wire.”
Ax frowned. “Why didn’t you tell me about all this?”
“Because you’ve got a big mouth. Now, come on.”
When the searchlights had reached the far end of the yard, the two rushed across the open space and hugged the shadow of the wall. Levi attached one end of the copper wire to a metal drainpipe and flung the heavy, weighted end over the razor wire, releasing his grip before it touched the wire. Sparks flew as the wire shorted. The searchlights went dark as the fuses blew. Quickly, he stepped away from the wall and twirled the fire hose to gain momentum. Then he tossed it up and over the coiled razor wire. On his first attempt, it fell short. The barb caught on the lip of the wall. It took him several heart-stopping moments to free the hose and try again. He sighed with relief as it snagged the wire on his second toss. He handed one end of the hose to Ax.
“Now, pull.”
The wire stretched taut but remained in place, secured by the steel posts embedded in the concrete. Hoisting the mattress over his shoulder, secured by a piece of twine, Levi began climbing the hose hand over hand, feet braced against the wall. He reached the top, slung the mattress over the wire, and signaled for Ax to follow him. The out-of-shape accountant struggled up the hose, eating away at their precious time. The searchlights flared as an emergency auxiliary circuit was thrown. They had very little time remaining. Levi considered leaving his companion behind, but the frightened Ax redoubled his efforts. With both of them on the top of the wall, protected from the sharp wire by the mattress, Levi pulled up the hose, dropped it over the outside wall, and slid down the other side.
The hard earth beneath his shoes renewed his strength. Years in the prison had dulled his senses. Now they were fully awake, revitalized. He took a deep breath. The air, free of the stench of other prisoners and death, filled his lungs with joy. He would not go back to prison.
Ax’s descent was ungainly, but he managed to reach the ground without falling to his death. Heading southeast, they passed the water tower he had gazed upon so many times. It had stood like a giant taunting his confinement. They soon reached the Florence Canal, the first of three they would have to ford to reach safety. The water was cold but only reached to his knees. As they waded across it, the first sirens began wailing behind them signaling their escape. They had no time to stop and rest.
They encountered the first zombies stumbling along the railroad tracks. The creatures were gaunt and slow moving. Until he saw them, Levi had no true idea of how bad the situation outside the prison walls was. The creatures were starving because human prey had become scarce. That meant either few living people remained in the area, or they were remaining indoors. That was bad for the survivors, but good for them. With few people watching, they could make good their escape. The zombies spotted the two humans and gave half-hearted chase, but their emaciated condition slowed them down. Levi easily outran them, but Ax struggled to keep up. Levi didn’t bother looking back. Ax either kept up or he died.
At the Central Arizona Project, the last and the largest of the three canals they would have to cross, Ax knelt on the ground catching his breath while Levi studied the current. The CAP was deeper than the other canals, and the water, fed by pumps, ran swiftly. The ribbon of concrete meandered from the Colorado River to points throughout the state, delivering water to farms, cities, and reservoirs. There was no way across except for the bridges at the roads, and they would be watched. They would have to swim. He took a deep breath and dove into the frigid water without hesitation. He didn’t know if his companion could swim, but such thoughts didn’t enter his mind. He was free, and he intended to remain so at any cost.
An hour later, wet, cold, and exhausted, they reached a mobile home on the outskirts of Florence. It appeared abandoned, but the pair approached carefully. Now was not the time to receive a load of buckshot in the face from an overly cautious homeowner. The door wasn’t locked. Inside, the trailer was empty of people with signs of being hastily abandoned. Stale, rotting food remained on the table. Drawers had been pulled out of counters and their contents dumped on the floor. Levi stripped off his wet prison uniform
, toweled dry, and in the pile of discarded clothing on the bedroom floor found a pair of pants and a shirt that fit. There was no food in the cabinets, but he discovered a six-pack of hot beer beneath the sink. He popped a top and guzzled it down, his first taste of beer in three long years. It tasted like manna from heaven.
Ax walked into the small kitchen from the bedroom looking ridiculous in a too small ASU jersey and a pair of bright red exercise shorts. His pale legs almost glowed in the darkness of the trailer. “What’s next?” he asked.
Levi collapsed into a chair and finished his beer. “We wait until things die down, and then make our way to Tucson.”
“Why Tucson? I’m from Phoenix.”
Levi shook his head. For an accountant, Ax could be incredibly stupid. “And I’m from Yuma, and those will be the first places they look for us.” He picked up a straw Stetson sitting on the coffee table and tried it on. It fit. Soon, they would need food and transportation, but he knew the police would give up the chase quickly. They had bigger problems to deal with than a pair of escaped convicts. Once the commotion died down, they would find refuge in Tucson. A breakdown in society was an opportunity for men like him. With a few like-minded individuals, they could survive the apocalypse nicely, taking what they wanted, living like kings. He lay back in his chair, crossed his legs, closed his eyes, and dreamt of his future in the new world.
Jake’s Law is available from Amazon here
Infernal Corpse: A Zombie Novel Page 21
