by Joe Hart
He unlocked the second handcuff just before he reached the lobby door, and dropped them in a jangling heap on the floor. Again he wished for a window in the door before him, some way to see if the lobby teemed with guards and if this was the end. He opened the door as softly as he could and peeked out.
The main desk was empty. Perhaps it was Shelly’s shift here tonight. He hoped so. He pushed the door open the rest of the way and jogged across the silent lobby. The doors to the outside were black rectangles, and the lights overhead threw the entire room into an eerie shade of yellow.
He slid to a stop at Andrews’s door and wrenched at the knob. It stayed immobile in his hand.
“Shit,” Sullivan cursed. He needed to find the warden. He was the only one who could help him now. Sullivan pulled on the knob again, praying it would give so he could at least hide in the office until he figured out his next move. He let go after a moment, in exasperation, and ran in the opposite direction.
Miraculously his keycard was still operational, and he flung the door to the main holding area open, shoving the handgun into the back of his pants as he went. The guard desk on the other side of the door was as empty as the front desk had been. Sullivan searched the rows of cells and the portion of the second floor catwalk that he could see. He spied no uniforms in either area.
He tried to control his breathing as he walked at a brisk pace to the hallway that led to the cafeteria, scanning his key against the reader when he reached the locked door. The hallway was dark when he stepped inside, with only a fan of dim light creeping from beneath the infirmary door. Hope flared within his chest at the sight. Amanda could help him hide. She’d know a way out or somewhere safe.
The door to the infirmary clicked open and Sullivan cautiously pulled on the handle. Amanda sat at the small desk in the corner of the room, her hair pulled back in a ponytail and a pair of thin-framed glasses on her face. She looked up as he stepped inside.
“Sullivan? What’s going on?”
He went to her as she rose from her chair, her eyes finding his as he neared. “Amanda, you have to listen to me very carefully. Something is horribly wrong here. There’s some sort of parasite in the prison, in the people. A few guards attacked me in my room and tried taking me somewhere—”
“Wait, what?” Amanda asked. “Some of the guards tried to attack you?”
“Yes, and I’ll explain everything, but there’s no time now. I’m sure they’ll be coming here any minute. Is there somewhere to hide?”
Amanda’s face became a mask of confusion, and she backed toward her desk. Her eyes squinted and her blinking became more rapid.
Sullivan saw her shoulders go rigid, and raised his hands in front of him. “Look, I know this sounds crazy, but I’m telling the truth. Someone tried to frame Barry after he disappeared. They tried to make it look like he destroyed the boat.”
Amanda stopped edging backward. “The boat’s destroyed? What do you mean ‘destroyed’? It won’t work?”
“Someone shot it full of holes, but Barry didn’t do it, one of the guards did. You have to trust me.”
“I don’t even know you, you’re not making any sense,” Amanda said. Her eyes ran over him as if she wasn’t sure if he was dangerous, but her muscles relaxed and she stood her ground. “Maybe you should lie down for a while, I’ll call the warden—”
“No, there’s no time for that!” Sullivan said. Amanda winced and he breathed deeply, trying to calm himself. “I’m sorry,” he continued in a lower voice. “But I really need your help.”
Amanda stared at him, and he could see the indecision pulling at her, swaying her.
“Please,” he said, his voice raw with emotion.
A beat and then her head tilted forward once. “There’s a mechanical room off the cafeteria. The air ducts are pretty large. You might be able to fit in one. Follow me.”
She moved to the door and opened it without a sound. Sullivan followed her closely. He could smell a faint whiff of her perfume, something sugary. Any other time it may have excited him, but now, stepping out into the darkened hall, all he felt were the pangs of fear streaking through his chest and stomach.
They walked fast through the black of the hall, and soon a pale light spilled into the space around them as Amanda opened the door to the cafeteria, which was blessedly devoid of life. Sullivan’s hand rested on the butt of the handgun at his back, but he didn’t draw it, in fear of alarming Amanda further. Only half of the overhead fluorescents were on, drowning the long tables in patches of gloom.
Amanda skirted the wall and moved into an alcove set off to the east side of the room, which Sullivan hadn’t noticed before. There was a scraping of metal and then they were in a narrow room with a large electrical panel dominating one wall, a row of boxes and shelves lining the other. Sullivan heard the hum of electricity and the soft hiss of air escaping around the door Amanda shut behind them.
“Thank you,” Sullivan said, turning toward her. Amanda nodded and pressed her lips together until they were nearly white.
“I’ll probably lose my job over this,” she said, as Sullivan began examining the far end of the room for an access panel that would accept his bulk.
“If I get out of here alive, I’ll make sure you have a job,” he replied.
“How did you know that it wasn’t Barry’s gun that destroyed the motor on the boat?”
Sullivan stopped walking toward the rear of the space, the gears of his mind grinding against one another. A stone dropped into the pit of his stomach, and as casually as he could, he said, “I don’t think I ever said someone shot the motor.”
He looked over his shoulder at the doctor and felt his stomach sink lower. A cruel smile sat on her lips, where only worry had been before.
“I’m just curious. You don’t seem to be the sharpest knife in the drawer,” Amanda said.
Sullivan turned and faced her. His nerves tingled, begging his muscles to fly into action, but he restrained them. “What’s really going on here?” he asked.
Amanda laughed, and it was so cold, Sullivan thought the sound might freeze solid in his eardrums. “A revolution. Something so beautiful, you have to see it to believe it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, things are going to change in a big way and they’ll never be the same.”
“Where’s Barry?” Sullivan asked. His right hand crept closer to his side, his fingers open and ready.
Amanda laughed again and Sullivan nearly winced at the sound. “Oh, he’s serving a purpose more pure than any he ever had in his meager life before this. You should be happy for him, since you won’t ever get the chance to do the same.”
Amanda rushed across the space between them, her mouth open, revealing a squirming mass of tissue, wriggling to spill free. Sullivan reached for the gun and managed to draw it halfway out, before she hit him.
They fell to the floor in a heap, Amanda on top of him, the tentacles streaming from her mouth, reaching for him, the tips snapping back and forth. Sullivan brought the gun around and watched Amanda easily catch his arm in a firm grip. One of the tendrils lashed out and cut a wide swath in the skin of his wrist. The pain burned through his arm as if he’d reached into a furnace. His hand spasmed and the gun fell to the floor beside his head. Sullivan bucked his hips and tried to roll Amanda’s slight form over, but she balanced upon him like a tightrope walker and countered his every move. Her free hand flashed to his throat, and he coughed as she began to squeeze, the blood in his face and temples pressurizing, pushing tears into his eyes.
Sullivan reached out with his left hand, searching for something within his reach to use as a weapon, but he only felt boxes and cold floor. He could see his pulse in his vision now, a bobbing that made him feel like he was driving fast over a rough road. Amanda leaned forward, bringing her face and the whipping feelers closer, and he pushed against her to no avail. A tendril paused above Sullivan, and he saw a strange serration along its edge. He had seen the ridg
es before, only larger, on the object extracted from Alvarez’s head.
“This is the future, Sully. Isn’t it beautiful?” Amanda’s words were barely discernible through the coils in her mouth. Her eyes were silver and dead in her face, frozen steel in January.
A pistol appeared beside Amanda’s head, bucking as a round blew through the side of her skull.
The sound was deafening, and Sullivan grimaced as he felt wet matter spray his face and hair. The iron-like grip on his neck slackened and fell away, as Amanda’s body tipped off him and slumped to the floor. Sullivan sat up, retching and scooting away as fast as he could. He kicked at the corpse’s legs until he was free of their touch. His eyes shot up to the figure that stood over him, and for a moment he didn’t believe his senses.
Everett Mooring’s hand shook as he tried to keep the gun trained on the body before him. He still wore his baseball cap, but Sullivan could see his squinting eyes were now wide and unblinking beneath its bill. Sullivan slid back another few feet, until his shoulders met the unyielding surface of a shelf. His chest heaved and his heart blasted against his ribs.
“What the fuck?” Mooring finally said, his eyes never leaving the doctor’s corpse. He pushed the gun farther away from him, and Sullivan thought that he might fire again, until it gradually dropped to his side.
“Thank you,” Sullivan said. His throat was full of gravel. Everett’s eyes slid over to where Sullivan rested. The man was in shock. Sullivan gained his feet, grabbed the gun from the floor, and went to him. Everett remained motionless, and only looked up when Sullivan placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Are you okay?” Sullivan asked.
Everett blinked and nodded, his eyes creeping back to the spreading pool around Amanda’s head. “I killed her.”
“Yes, you did, and you saved my life. Everett, listen to me. Is there somewhere safe we can hide? There’s more of them like this, and they’ll be here soon.”
Everett swallowed and looked at Sullivan, his eyes awash in a faraway stare. “More?”
Sullivan snapped his fingers a few inches in front of the guard’s nose. Everett flinched, but his eyes cleared a little. “Yes, we need to hide, Everett. Where? Where can we go?”
Everett licked his lips and holstered his weapon after shooting the corpse on the floor one last look. “They won’t find us in the shed. Follow me.”
Chapter 10
Sullivan wiped away the last vestiges of gore from his cheek using the bottom edge of his T-shirt. He tipped his face up into the night sky, which was still dampened with a light mist, and reveled in the feeling of the moisture. He could smell the copper of Amanda’s blood and it nearly gagged him. Hopefully the mist would help wash it away. Sullivan turned his head to either side as he followed Everett’s footsteps across the quiet grounds, and halted a short distance behind the other man when they reached the toolshed beside the sunken boat. Everett worked for a few seconds in the dark, and Sullivan heard the rasping of steel on steel. The outline of the door opened toward them and Everett disappeared inside. Sullivan followed and eased the door shut.
The air in the shed was stale and smelled of iron and gasoline. Sullivan could tell the floor was concrete and that the wall to the right was close by, but other than that, his eyesight swam in the utter blackness of the building. A small LED lit up a few feet away and illuminated a portion of a large riding lawn mower and Everett’s booted feet.
“This way,” Everett said, and the light bobbed away toward the rear of the shed.
Sullivan followed, mimicking the guard’s path and avoiding barking his shins on several sawhorses, steel canisters, and a dormant snow blower. The back wall of the structure was studded with shelves and pegs that held a number of hand tools and various containers. Everett paused and moved to the far left corner of the building, where a sheet of plywood leaned against the back wall. The guard set the flashlight down, which lit up the corner well enough for Sullivan to see the other man slide the wide board away from the wall, revealing a black square just large enough for a man to walk through bent over.
“Come on,” Everett said, picking up the LED again and motioning to Sullivan.
“What is this?” Sullivan asked in a hushed voice, his vocal cords rusty from the abuse Amanda inflicted.
“Somewhere safe for now,” the guard replied.
Sullivan felt apprehension rearing in his mind but shoved it aside. He had no other options. He ducked and stepped past Everett into a narrow room behind the rear wall of the shed. He moved a few feet in and tentatively stood, fearing the ceiling was low and he would hit his head. The air was open above him, and he scooted forward another step to accommodate Everett, as the guard moved in behind him and slid the plywood into place over the doorway. Everett turned and swung the flashlight’s beam into the space, and Sullivan got his first look at their surroundings.
The room they stood in ran the entire length of the shed’s back wall but was only three feet wide from Sullivan’s estimation. A narrow cot sat at the far end of the room and a flimsy bench jutted out from the real rear wall. There were two cases of bottled water near Sullivan’s feet, and a crooked pile of books sat near the entrance.
“Have a seat,” Everett said, and positioned himself on the floor. Sullivan settled onto the edge of the bench, waiting for it to snap into kindling beneath him. Everett pushed one end of the flashlight and the little LED winked out. “Sorry, but you never know who might see a flash in the dark and come to investigate.”
“What the hell is this place?” Sullivan asked, trying not to panic in the sudden wash of darkness.
“Just a safe place I set up awhile back. I come here when I need to. Jesus, I think I might throw up.”
Sullivan waited for a moment, letting the other man calm down before he asked, “You built this?”
“No, the false wall was here. I noticed the inside proportions didn’t match the outside one day and measured when no one was around. My father was an architect, so I know a little about buildings. Out of curiosity I cut a hole in the wall and found the space. I’m not sure if it was a mistake or purposely built. Thought it might come in handy, so I covered the hole with the plywood. No one knows about it but me.”
Sullivan rubbed his eyes, and there was nearly no difference in his sight as he blocked out his vision. “Why? What’s this place for?”
Everett sighed. “I guess you could call it my thinking room. I come here sometimes after shifts, sometimes during, and just sit and go over everything that’s in my mind. My memory’s kind of bad, so I write everything down in those journals over there.”
Sullivan’s head involuntarily turned toward the stack of books, although he couldn’t make them out. “I don’t understand. What do you write down?”
“Things that might help me.”
“Help you do what?”
“Help me find my brother.”
Silence hung between them, as thick as the darkness. The wheels of Sullivan’s mind spun for a moment, and then caught. “Everett, what’s going on here?”
He heard the other man shift on the floor, into what he could only guess was a more comfortable position. “My brother Alex—well, my half brother, I should say, same mother, different fathers—went missing here a year and a half ago. He was in corrections just like me. This was his first position. He got into the program about five years after I did. He was like that since we were young, always following me around, trying to do what I did. I thought he’d grow out of it, but—” Everett stopped. Sullivan couldn’t tell if he was considering his thoughts or fighting to keep his voice steady.
“He was so proud when he got the call for the job here. We went out and celebrated. I was working at the state penitentiary in Iowa at the time. I got a call a month later from the local police, saying that Alex hadn’t shown up for work one evening. That fuckup Jaan you met earlier said he must have run off on his own. I didn’t buy it for a minute. Alex was dedicated, he got top marks in his graduating class. He l
oved being in corrections. He wouldn’t just walk away from his first break for a woman or another opportunity, like everyone said. I knew him. Something happened to him and I had to find out. Have to find out.” Everett’s voice faded away and was replaced with the renewed tapping of rain on the metal roof above their heads.
“So you came looking for him,” Sullivan said, waiting and listening to Everett’s steady breathing.
“Yeah. We have different last names and no one knows me around here, so I used that as an advantage. I know his disappearance has something to do with this place, I felt it the moment I saw it for the first time. Something’s wrong here.”
“It’s too quiet,” Sullivan offered.
“Yes, and the guards themselves are strange. I’ve only met a few of them that acted really normal, and they were brand-new like me. The personnel are cliquey and closed off. The warden’s the only one that’s been truly honest and forthright with me. I had seniority when I transferred here, so I started higher than most others and became Andrews’s right hand. Like I said before, any information I found concerning Alex I wrote down in my journals and kept them out here. The shed’s close and relatively safe, so it doesn’t raise any suspicions.”
“Have you found any information about your brother’s whereabouts?” Sullivan asked.
Everett shifted on the floor again. “No. Nothing. It’s like he dropped off the face of the earth.”
Sullivan shook his head, Barry’s face flashing through his mind. “Have you done any research to see if this has happened before? Any other disappearances of employees or inmates?”
“Yes, I checked. One other guard vanished about five years ago, a woman named Susan James. Almost the same situation as Alex, and there’s something else.” Sullivan heard the guard fumble for something in the dark, and then the flashlight came back on, shielded by Everett’s palm. “The top journal over there, there’s a newspaper clipping inside of it.”
Sullivan turned in the cramped space and pulled the uppermost journal from the pile. Inside the cover was a folded article from USA Today, dating four months earlier. A smiling picture of a balding middle-aged man in a dark suit hung above bold text that read Nuclear physicist still missing. Sullivan scanned the article below, which named the man in the picture as Dr. Arnold Bolt.
